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Welcome to the Delling Pod with me James Dellingpole and I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest but before I introduce him a quick word on behalf of our sponsor.
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Bob.
Bob Moran.
I know I do always say this but sometimes you know how I love all my children but you do love some of your children more than others or on any given day and I have to say I'm so excited to have you on the podcast.
Really.
This is a great day for me, James, and here we are doing it at last.
There's been an awful lot of foreplay, hasn't there, over the last few years?
There's been so much foreplay, and the way I rationalised it, I thought, you're kind of the perfect guest, because you can talk, and we're on the same page, which is always a good start.
And I thought, well, don't do them this week, because you'll try and get somebody more difficult.
And then I thought, we're going to do a live show first, because I've always got Bob on reserve.
But actually, what ended up happening was that I never got you on.
And it was just like this massive lacuna in my guest list, that you should have been there ages ago.
Anyway, here we are at last.
I think you first asked me in about September 2020.
And at that point, I mean, I wasn't as well known as I am now.
Also, I'd never done an interview before.
And I was, and still am, a huge, huge fan of the Deling Pod.
And I thought, I can't do this as my first one.
I need to get some practice in first.
I've probably had a bit too much practice, if anything.
Well, I remember vividly the day we met.
Because it was on one of the marches.
I'm surprised you remember.
What, because I was stoned off my face at the time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that was not my fault.
In my defence, what had happened... I went to quite a few of those... I'm still not sure what we were marching for, just sort of freedom generally.
I mean, against the vaccines and against this and that and against lockdowns.
It made sense at the time.
It was very beautiful.
There was a great coming together of people and I look back with tremendous fondness to that period where we all got along and all, you know, races, colours and creeds and all that and we were all united.
It was great.
So I went to one of those marches and I was going through the gate of Hyde Park.
And somebody said, oh, James, mate, have some of this.
And he passed me his jazz woodbine.
And I thought, well, what harm can it do before a march?
So I had a couple of puffs.
I think it must have been neat or something. - Right.
It was very strong anyway.
And I spent the rest of the march in a haze.
But you were there.
You were floating through that haze at me.
I was floating around you.
It enhanced.
And your dear sister was on the other side, making sure you didn't trip off the curb at any point.
My lovely sister, who is the nicest of all the Delingpoles.
We've all been... It's like a kind of team of... Actually, you know what?
Did you ever play Dungeons and Dragons?
No, I didn't.
But I know about it.
You probably didn't, no.
You're not that sad.
Okay.
So, when you're playing Dungeons and Dragons... I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with the people who did.
Oh, did you?
Were they satirical?
No, I just, um, I was good at drawing all the armoured monsters and wizards and that stuff, so, um, I made some friends that way, but I never actually wanted to play the game.
Well, when you are creating characters, you get these different dices with weird numbers of sides, like, sorry, dice, with different numbers of sides, like a 20 side or a 19 side or something like that.
And you throw these dice, and these create the traits of your characters, the strengths and the weaknesses.
And whoever's rolling the dice, when Helen came along, my sister, it was like, yeah, let's make a really nice and loving, and you should be the nice Delingpole.
And I'm kind of, I think I'm the spiky Delingpole.
I've probably got other qualities as well, but yeah.
Yeah, but Helen is so lovely and so gentle and yet there's absolutely nothing naive about her.
You know, you can't fool her, which is quite rare.
It's rare to have those two qualities.
It's odd, given that she, of the three original Delingpoles, that's the ones from my father's first marriage, I mean I've got lots of siblings, half-siblings and whatever's, steps, I love them very much.
I'm not trying to rule them out, but the original Delingpoles are Dick, Helen and myself.
Helen was the first down the rabbit hole by by years and she and she was in the in the unfortunate position that you and I find ourselves in now where On encountering normies, there are just whole areas of discussion that are off limits and what it must have been like for Helen, well I know what it was like because she's told me, it was miserable.
Coming, when she came to stay with me, she couldn't talk about the the most interesting stuff.
She had to pretend that it was, you know, so she had to ignore all the chemtrails in the skies and all her favourite... She must be also relieved That you have gone all the way with it, you know, because we all know people who went a few steps down the line and then stopped.
I imagine she must have been worried, you know, and now James has started on this path.
I hope he doesn't.
This is the whole thing we're dealing with at the moment is so many people still want to cling to this and that from their old lives.
They want to believe that certain foundation stones are still there that they can cling to.
It's very rare to encounter other people who have done the thing we all must do, which is essentially dismiss all of it.
I'm sensing a segue opportunity there, which I'm not going to take for just a second, but you're absolutely right.
I mean, I agree with, as I so often do, with Mary Finch, who says, we're not a movement.
We're all individuals.
And we're not going to agree on everything because we're spiky and difficult.
And the things that made us awake are the things that also stop us becoming part of this sort of unified movement.
And it's ludicrous to expect us to all think the same thing.
That said, It has been very disappointing to me, as it has been to you I know, watching people who... In fact, that links back to what I was saying about those marches.
I'm nostalgic for them because...
We were all on this having the same trip more or less.
We're all on the same page.
We agreed that we knew who the enemy was they were the government and they were the rulers of the darkness of this world and then we started.
You know, man down here and there.
And the first cause of man down was the Ukraine-Russia side.
Yeah.
Where people were persuaded that we had an interest in sending materiel and money and possibly even manpower to go and die in this pointless war which had been orchestrated by NATO.
And yet we were being browbeaten by newspapers into thinking was somehow caused by Putler.
And some people fell for that.
But the most... Putin was trying to destroy democracy.
That was the democracy of Ukraine, this beautiful free country.
And all these people that we were on the marches with, so many of them who had just watched their government dismantle democracy completely in their own country, now bought into the idea that their politicians wanted to go and defend it somewhere else.
And this idea has carried through and it's still very much a problem in the current situation, as I'm sure we'll get on to.
But I just couldn't understand that.
These people, I know you agree with this, could not have been more blatant in stating their position and saying, look, we're not who you thought we were.
We don't care about the things you think we care about.
We're not concerned.
We don't go to war for the reasons we've told you.
And I thought everyone got that and was then moving on with that new reality.
But all it took was for them to hold up Putin and they all forgot immediately.
It was it was so so weird that people who had got really comfortable with the idea that the government will not only lie to you but it will actually it will actively participate in your demise.
I mean it will actually use drugs deliberately to kill people in care homes in order to a Bump off a few people but be to inflate the the mortality figures for your fake pandemic.
So people people were used to that and they were used to the idea that the media funded by this government would would it would?
Would act in in in cahoots with the government in in promoting this lie.
So the government lies the media lies and yet people would suddenly go.
Yeah, they lied to us about covid.
They lied to us about vaccines.
They lied about but they wouldn't lie to us about foreign policy that they're absolutely just, you know, scouts on them.
I you know, I took the view that this What began in 2020 was so all-encompassing and so extreme and so undeniably evil that we have to totally dismiss all of these people and say, you know, these people are against us.
We cannot believe what they say anymore.
Not just the politicians, but journalists and media personalities who push this stuff.
And now you often see this line from people on our side where, you know, somebody says something about the current thing that they agree with and they'll say, oh, well, I didn't agree with him on this, but he's got this one right.
I'm going to listen to him or I'm going to promote this article he's written.
And I think we can't fall into that trap.
You know, we know that these people have absolutely no moral integrity whatsoever.
So even if they happen to get something right, I don't think you should continue to promote them.
That's my view.
That's true.
Even to the point, actually, maybe we'll talk about this later on, but...
Yeah, I was thinking about Peter Hitchens.
Actually, I'll just make this point very briefly.
So, you know, Peter Hitchens is right on some issues and wrong on others.
He was rightly sceptical about lockdowns and then he kind of shit the bed, in the view of us awake people, by By talking about how very reluctantly he'd taken the vaccine, so he'd gone on holiday, and it had to be done, and nothing he'd do, and it wasn't his fault.
People were divided, yeah, but he was one of the first people to criticise lockdowns.
No, no, that makes it worse, Peter, that makes it worse, that you were aware of what's going on and yet you still succumbed, and by succumbing you let us down, because what you were saying was, The game is over.
The game is up.
There's no point resisting anymore.
They've won.
Which is not a good way to fight a battle, is it?
No, but it's sort of been his modus operandi for a long time, where he really highlights a cause, often very early on, and maybe writes a book or two about it, and writes several articles, and reaches a certain point, and just says, oh, we've lost.
You know, forget it.
Once he'd written the article about taking the jabs, he spent months and months going on about e-scooters and nothing else.
But it's interesting, you know, I said about how I've been watching the Deling Pod for a long time.
I'm pretty sure.
So, I stumbled across you by accident, James, and I know you won't mind me saying this because it's one of the catchphrases, but I wasn't really familiar with your stuff.
I hadn't really read anything that you'd written.
And I was aware of you, though, obviously.
I have a terrible feeling it might have been trigonometry or something.
This is back in 2019, this would be, before any of the nonsense started.
And you know how you're watching podcasts and something else will come on automatically afterwards.
You know, so I was here drawing a cartoon, I think, and you suddenly hear this, Now on Breitbart, James Dowingpole!
And I thought, oh yeah, James Dowingpole, what's it?
I'll leave this on and I'm pretty sure it was one of your early Peter Hitchens pods that you did and I think you must have been talking about the whole Brexit situation and everything and I thought oh these guys these guys are really good actually and this Delingpole character I just had a feeling, it was very strange, I had a feeling that I should keep listening to you.
You know, I had this sense that somehow you'd be quite important in my life.
I suppose I had the same feeling about Peter Hitchens, but that didn't work out in quite the same way.
I think he's a very interesting character.
If one wanted to be conspiracy-minded, which I am, One could point out that he came from a military background.
His father was in the military.
Now, obviously, that generation were the wartime generation.
They bred.
So one could make that accusation against any child of the wartime generation.
But at the same time, it is possibly an indicator.
I wonder sometimes whether the two Hitchens brothers R were change agents.
Because it seems to me that given what we now know about the media and how it operates, we know that the media is a lie machine.
We know that it is there to push false narratives or to manipulate people.
And If you are basically the name columnist on the Mail on Sunday, which is, the Mail group obviously is a key part of the lie machine.
It sort of manipulates the sort of lower middle and middle middle classes particularly, plays on their fears, ramps up the hysteria.
So you've got this designated, supposed resistant to the system, that he questions it, you know, he questions, he's currently questioning, for example, The need for a war with Putin, and he was sceptical about Ukraine generally, and he's pretty good.
But he'll only go so far, so he corrals people into a particular position, people who might be, yes, asking questions about the war, but then he'll just leave them hanging.
He won't, like he did with the vaccines, he'll raise objections and then he'll capitulate.
I know what you mean.
He sort of sets people off on these journeys of opposition.
But the other thing that happens is if they escalate their position too far, he starts to get irritated with them.
He always seems to have a clear cutoff point in his mind in advance where, you know, well, if you start saying things like this or if you start questioning this element, then I'm going to turn around and have a go at you as well, which always surprises people, I think. then I'm going to turn around and have a go I I don't know.
I mean, we've both worked for...
Big newspapers and you're never completely free and there's always a point where somebody will say, oh, you know, I'll read as a board of this now, move on to something else or, you know, I wouldn't go that far.
But who knows, I mean what do you think about the rivalry between, this is quite interesting, do you think the rivalry was genuine between the Hitchens brothers?
I sometimes wonder if they're sort of the intellectual equivalent of the Gallagher brothers.
Well, I mean, even if it was put on initially to establish a difference between them, I think it quickly... Even if they were putting on fancy dress outfits, pretty soon those clown outfits became their actual persona.
It's very hard to know where the play acting and manipulation begins and where it becomes sincere.
Very interesting that point you made just then about what it's like being a journalist and being steered in particular directions.
You and I Both have the experience of working within the mainstream media and spending a lot of our time not really getting it, not really getting that we were part of a lie machine.
Because I never felt, I mean I was doing it for about 25 years I think.
I started out on the evening standard and worked in the telegraph at Canary Wharf for a few years and freelance for the mail and so forth.
And I don't ever recall a period in all that time when I thought, hang on a second, this industry is evil, and it lies, and it's not there to inform the public, it's there to frighten them, and to control them.
It never did it to you?
No, not at all.
And, you know, it's hard to get into.
I mean, it's a difficult thing to make it and as any kind of journalist and end up working for a major publication and you feel um you feel very fortunate and you feel like uh you're part of something important and the interesting thing is that once you're there once you're in a newspaper and you're in a newsroom and um people are putting tomorrow's paper together
You just take it for granted that the news is what all these people are telling you the news is on that day.
You don't think about where are they getting the news from, what conversations are going on at the top about, well this is what we want you to tell people the news is, but of course that's not really the news.
Even though, and you probably know this, there will always be conversations and gossip about Oh, well, we know, you know, we found out, for example, or we found out next week Labour are going to do this.
But the Tories don't want the public to know, so we're not going to say anything about it like that.
There was always things like that.
So you do kind of know that the news is not the news, that newspapers don't just print everything they know about what's happening each day.
But you kind of assume that's all right, because It's strategic, or they want to keep things interesting, or they're worried that it might be a slow news week next week, or whatever.
You know, you can always excuse these things, but I see it in a completely different light now.
Well, I think one needs to view the newspapers as a branch of the intelligence services.
They're essentially a branch of the... they're the propaganda arm of the deep state.
And I think it's, it's very hard for most people in the industry to get this.
So people at the grunt level as well.
I mean, okay.
So you were a leading cartoonist, but I, and I was a sort of, you know, a name columnist, but there's a level above us that remains a mystery to me.
Um, I did actually, I did actually once see, um, I won't name him or his particular role.
I did once see a specialist editor from the Telegraph getting his briefing from, I'm sure it was MI5, MI6, one or the other.
Yeah.
And he sort of rather embarrassedly introduced me to this person who looked at me like he knew me, but like he wasn't particularly delighted to have been introduced on that occasion because it was all awkward.
But See, I was at the Telegraph when Max Hastings was editor, and there were these things called conferences.
Presumably they still had conferences every day.
And did you get the vibe?
I mean, the impression I got was that ideas were floated around for features and what should be our lead story this week and what our angle was.
But it always felt like an organic thing and an honest thing, not a conspiracy against the readers, but a desire to provide an interesting, informed newspaper for the next day.
Yeah, I think that's the key word, interesting.
It always appeared to be about what do our audience want to read about?
What will they find interesting?
What are they bored of?
And then, of course, the other thing that happens in conference is you have Christopher Howes would read out all the letters people had sent in, and that would be a very sort of significant point, whereas, oh, here's what our readers are saying today, and that would always steer what was going to go in the paper, what features they were going to do and things.
But you kind of think, well, where do these letters come from?
I mean, anyone could write a letter.
Yes.
Who are these people writing letters saying, oh, I absolutely agree with what Boris Johnson's doing this week?
You know, that seems an odd way to conduct your reporting of the news to me now.
And also, has it occurred to you that Christopher House is a Jesuit?
Yes, that has crossed my mind.
Beardy Howes, he's the sort of person that in Victorian times, urchins in the streets would have shouted, Royal Beaver!
Apparently that's what they used to do with people with particularly spectacular beards.
Royal Beaver!
And he's a charming, civilised, erudite, apparently Christian man.
Very charming, very gentle, always very kind to me.
Very kind of eclectic knowledge base, interested in quirky, you know, architectural features and things.
But when he first joined Twitter, all he did was take photographs of old drain covers.
Exactly.
The kind of thing he's into, supposedly.
I'm going to make a pun there.
What a perfect cover.
It's supposed to work.
I mean, Isn't it like eccentric bloke with a beard, Christian, traditionalist, and yet this is the guy, the gently, softly spoken man who comes into editorial conference and essentially steers the newspaper's editorial line by using these reader letters, provenance unknown.
I mean, he could have written them himself, or they could have been commissioned by junior assistants at MI5 Vauxhall HQ.
You just don't know, do you?
Well, it was always clear that these were the letters he had picked out to read in conference.
You never knew how many other letters there were that hadn't been selected.
Probably the ones from real people.
Yeah, but there would always be, there would very often be, things would come up in those conferences, what, you know, somebody would ask a question, and there would be a slight awkwardness of, well, we don't know yet, or I'll talk to you about that afterwards, or, you know, a shake of the head, or there would always be things that certain people weren't allowed to know.
I was not, even though, you know, I was the sort of main cartoonist, There's stuff I wasn't allowed to know.
I would be told there's a big story breaking later that's going to be on the front page.
I'd say, well, yeah, tell me what it is so I can do a cartoon about it.
And they'd sometimes say, no, we're not telling anyone.
You can't know, which would be a real pain in the arse.
But there were always things like that.
Having to do a cartoon on something which you didn't know what it was.
Yeah, I can see that.
Yeah, um, you could tell Matt, which would really piss me off.
Matt would be allowed to know, but I wouldn't because I was, you know, one rung beneath him in the pecking order.
Yeah.
Matt was a great, even when I was there, Matt was a great power.
Yeah, he is.
He's a great power.
But I do really like Matt.
He's always been lovely to me.
I do think Matt's evil.
I like Matt.
He's just somebody who's naturally very funny and good at encapsulating things in a pocket cartoon.
He is.
He is.
And he's very humble and slightly embarrassed of his success, which is always nice.
Yes, exactly.
It's the appropriate response to enormous success.
Now, before you got unceremoniously ousted on the most ridiculous of pretexts, were you chucked out in the end because of that fake doctor?
Well, I don't know if she's a fake doctor.
If she's a doctor of something that doesn't make me trust her expertise in anything.
That woman on Twitter.
The alleged doctor, yes.
What is she a doctor?
Harry Potter studies or what?
She's meant to be a palliative care doctor.
Oh, so what, Midazolam?
She gives people... Yeah, they always tell you, James, don't they?
They always spell it out for you.
Anyway...
She's one of those people who I'd seen on Twitter for the whole time, and everything she said was awful and horrible and made me very cross, but I didn't... I never bothered engaging.
It's always probably a better idea not to engage.
Had a bad day, feeling particularly cross and upset, and I saw this tweet she'd done about somebody being mean to her for wearing a mask, so I responded to it.
And then, you know, Twitter exploded and there was a big pile on.
You wouldn't know about Twitter pilings.
It's very similar to what I've gone through in the last week.
It was kind of the same thing.
We're going to get to that.
We're going to get to the money shot.
Don't you worry, Bob.
Anyway, so, you know, I was suspended and technically that's what I lost my job for, but it was so... Technically.
So not a sackable offence.
It was, you know, ridiculous to be fired.
For that, that I understood it was more because of my overall position and the fact that I was refusing to budge on the jab stuff.
And I'd had several warnings about what I was posting on social media and the way I was criticizing the injections.
And I think They knew I wasn't going to play ball and they knew the relationship was going to become more and more strained.
I knew that too.
I suppose, in a way, I gave them an opportunity.
The thing is, although it was frightening...
It's not ideal to lose your job that you're meant to have for the rest of your life when you're 35 and you've got three small children and a mortgage to pay.
But as soon as it started, as soon as I kind of was called in for the hearing and And the reality dawned on me.
I did have a sense of, you know, this is probably meant to be.
This feels like a higher power is saying to me, it's time for you to... Yeah, I was wondering whether you were going to mention that.
That was, I suppose, I'd been tentatively circling God up until that point, considering whether I might want to get him involved in my life again.
But that whole episode really changed my perspective, I think, on all of that.
And of course, once I was fired, the first thing I did was come and see you at your event, when Lawrence was there.
And that again was, you know, I was suddenly surrounded by all these supportive, like-minded people.
And I just thought, you know, I think it will be okay.
And I think I'm going to be able to keep going.
And embrace this freedom, this complete independence, you know.
And I felt obliged to use it.
Yeah.
I was just going to interject.
It is weird when God does his moving in mysterious ways thing.
And it feels traumatic at the time when it happens.
And then you go, wait!
This was meant to be.
This was a kind of giant finger pointing down from heaven and going, yes, this is what I want you to do.
This is my plan for you.
And you go, yeah, I get it.
It's always been a bit of a mystery to me why I have the skills that I have, why I'm interested in doing cartoons and things.
I don't know where it came from.
I knew I loved it from an early age and I knew I wanted to do it.
I found out about working for a newspaper.
I assumed that's what I'm supposed to do.
That's what I'm here for, to work for a newspaper and do political cartoons till I drop off my stool at 85.
You know, that's my path.
And then as soon as all of this started, while I was still at the paper, I realised I think it's more to do with the fact that this was always going to happen in my lifetime, and I had something to say about it, that I would be able to do something.
I'm not pretending it's a big thing, but not just the fact that I was a cartoonist, but the kind of cartoons and the visual imagery I tend to create, and the stuff that I'm interested in, just lent itself to everything that was happening.
So I did get this sense of, okay, this is what you're supposed to be doing.
Forget the whole newspaper thing.
That was just a starting point for you.
You're meant to do something quite different, you know.
Well, isn't that interesting?
Because I was going to ask you, are you and I the only ones From that particular world.
I'm trying to think, am I missing somebody out?
I don't think there is anybody else, is there?
Mainstream journalists, you mean?
Yeah.
Who've burned their bridges.
I can't think of anyone who was as mainstream as we were.
Who's now... That's what I mean.
As awake and conspiratorial as the two of us have become.
Yes!
So, that leads me to the question...
Are these people all cowards?
Have they been blinded by the system?
Because after all, we were part of that system for a long time without being aware of its flaws to any great degree.
Are they frightened of losing their work?
Are they stuck inside?
Is it sort of the self-censorship which comes from being inside the Overton window and being in a business where self-censorship is the strongest censorship?
Or what?
How does it work?
I mean, I don't know.
I'm still baffled by some of the people I used to work with and how they... It's not that they supported it, even.
It's the people who didn't say anything at all.
It's the people who just looked at it and said, I think I'll sit this one out because it all looks a bit fraught and... Not in my wheelhouse.
Yeah, not in my wheelhouse, exactly.
Those people...
Yeah, I know from conversations I had with some of them that they totally agreed with me.
They could see absolutely that it was insane and immoral and disgusting.
And there were people saying, we're going to have to oust Boris Johnson.
It's going to get to the point where the Telegraph has to have a leader article saying he's got to go.
Those conversations were happening.
And then, like you say, they get so far and go, oh, this is a bit frightening.
I don't really like this.
I'll just take a few steps back and pretend none of this happened.
It is frightening.
I mean, we should say, we should admit, that it's not an easy thing to do.
To look back at your life and your career and think, well, you know, most of that was probably bullshit.
I mean, I, you know, for my show, I had to go back through all my cartoons and I was looking at stuff I was doing six, seven years ago for the Telegraph.
And there were so many I looked at and just thought that was nonsense.
That was nonsense.
You know, that wasn't true.
That was probably a load of rubbish.
That's a hard thing.
People don't want to have to do that.
They don't want to admit that their whole career may have been a lie.
But it's fine.
You can do it.
It's okay.
You can get past it.
Everything is worth something.
You've given me a horrible flashback to the days when I was furious with these people who didn't want to go to war in the Gulf because clearly we had a Casus Belli because these weapons of mass destruction have been found.
And I mean, it made sense.
We had to bring peace to the world through violence.
I mean, it made absolute sense, and I could have written any number of impassioned leader page articles on this subject, and I believed it!
Yeah, and it's also partly, you know, just if you buy into the left-right divide, you associate all sorts of things, you know, probably war being one of them, with being on the right, with being a conservative voter, and so you just, it's an automatic thing, it's a knee-jerk response to anything that comes along, you know.
I'm James Stirling Pohl, I'm a Tory, so I think this is okay.
And again, as soon as you abandon that and you go, there is no left-right divide, that's absolute nonsense, it's complete psy-op, you are actually able to think clearly about situations and, you know, not just go, I think of myself as Conservative, therefore I support X and what they're doing to their neighbours or whoever it may be.
Before you got chucked out of the Telegraph, I think you were there just long enough to see how rotten the situation was with COVID and the media.
Sorry, COVID and the media.
Yes.
What did you see?
There's a man, I won't name him because he doesn't deserve to be named, but he doesn't like either of us.
He and some other people, So they tried to make out that I was somehow deeply involved in the running of the Telegraph throughout 2020 and I was party to all kinds of meetings and steered this way or that on a particular day.
Now, the truth is I wasn't working in the office.
I hadn't worked in the office since 2018.
I worked from up here in my attic in the middle of nowhere in Somerset and I'd have one phone conversation with a junior editor in the morning where I'd talk about what I was going to do and then have another very brief conversation after I'd filed to say, yep, got it, okay, speak to you tomorrow.
That's it.
But occasionally I would hear gossip and I'd hear stories and I'd hear what was going on because remember, I wasn't seen as dangerous.
Nobody appeared to have a problem with anything I was doing until late 2020.
They were all very much behind me, and the readers loved it, and they were really supportive, and so they would say, oh yeah, you know, you're so right.
And I remember Tim Stanley once saying to me, you know, he's again a lovely guy, Tim Stanley, he said, one morning he said, I see you've gone full David Icke on masks.
And I got a bit upset.
I said, well, what do you mean?
Because I think I'd done a thread about how awful masks were and why they were going to destroy society and all of this.
And he said, no, no, no, no.
It's great.
I'm not criticizing you.
It's wonderful.
We would all say that stuff if we thought we could.
And I thought, OK, that's interesting.
I said, why can't you say this stuff?
And he said, well, ironically, he said, well, we're not cartoonists, so we can't get away with it.
But anyway, yeah, there were conversations.
There was a point where...
There had been these meetings at Downing Street.
Now, I already knew they were happening.
I hadn't really understood that they were meant to be a secret from the public, but there were several of these where all the Fleet Street editors were invited to Downing Street for private briefings from the scientific advisors, Whitty and Vallance, with the Prime Minister about, you know, Again, it's odd when you think about it.
The idea was, we're going to tell you how bad it really is.
You know, the stuff we don't want the public to know.
You think that's a bizarre thing to do in a deadly pandemic.
Anyway, I heard about, there was one set of these meetings that happened just before the lockdown in Christmas 2020.
You know, when all the hyperbole was going around, the NHS is going to collapse and the second wave is going to kill millions.
Everything like that.
The Telegraph editor had been, I don't know what happened there, but Fraser Nelson had been as well.
So this story was about what happened when Fraser Nelson went to this briefing and he went in and Whitty and Valance are there with their sort of flip chart and they show him the models and they tell him half a million are going to die in the second wave and we've got to lock down and we have to cancel Christmas.
And we're going to have to keep doing lockdowns until the jab arrives.
Obviously, the jab had arrived at that point, so we can't release anyone until everyone's been jabbed and all of this stuff.
And Boris Johnson says nothing.
He's just behind his desk.
And they then leave.
And Fraser, obviously, because Fraser Nelson has quite a close relationship with Boris Johnson, you know, they've worked together.
They know each other well.
He stayed and apparently basically said to him, what the hell was that?
You know that that was all complete nonsense.
You know, no country on earth had half a million deaths in the first wave.
I mean, obviously this is buying into the nonsense that there was a pandemic, but for argument's sake.
And he says, you can't keep doing this.
You can't call yourself a conservative prime minister and keep locking the country down.
You know, what are you doing?
And He apparently Boris Johnson looked at him like a broken man, white as a sheet and just said, I have to do what they tell me.
Now.
I think.
First of all, that's very interesting in the light of the COVID inquiry stuff where we're all told that the scientists were just following orders from politicians.
I mean, who knows?
Really, I don't care about that much anymore.
It's probably a double bluff.
They probably thought it was a strategic thing.
They always knew there'd be an inquiry or whatever.
What I found extraordinary, though, was that this was newsroom gossip and that Fraser Nelson, who claims to be A great award-winning journalist did not think that he should tell the public that the country was not being run by the Prime Minister, having heard it straight from the Prime Minister's mouth.
No.
Indeed, on the contrary, carried on pushing a line in The Spectator, which was essentially the government's line, barring light criticism of lockdowns.
Yeah, exactly.
But they needed money.
They didn't have any money.
They made sure that all newspapers, not just in this country but pretty much everywhere, were absolutely on their knees financially and the only revenue they had really was advertising.
Most of that advertising was from travel.
Obviously that disappeared.
So the government said we will give you millions and millions of pounds if you fill your pages with our propaganda about lockdowns and about masks and about the NHS app and then getting the jabs.
And they couldn't say no.
Or they could say no, they should have said no, but they didn't.
I just get this vibe that most people are really basic, really corruptible.
I mean, if you subscribe, as I do, to the notion that the devil is the god of this world, and people say, oh, I wonder what wiles he has to adopt in order to bend people to his will.
And actually, all he needs to do is get out a bag with Pound notes on the side, or swag, and just... that's it!
It's that simple!
Well that was the horrifying thing, wasn't it?
How quickly most people fell.
How quickly most people you'd known all of your life suddenly started saying things that you knew they didn't believe in, you knew they didn't agree with.
I don't know.
I sometimes wonder if...
It's all very well talking about behavioral science and propaganda.
I get that that stuff's powerful.
All the things that have been seeded, the way the system had been established and the technology was there.
But there was a sense, and this is, I suppose, the beginning of my kind of spiritual reawakening.
At the beginning, there was just this sense that something really powerful, something beyond man-made stuff, was at work.
In just turning people's consciousness off and inverting their morality, sometimes overnight.
Like a lot of people, you know, you feel the evil first, you recognize it as a real force, and you think, well, there must be an opposite.
There has to be an opposite.
Yeah.
What we're done for.
Yes.
It's funny, you're not the first person to describe that experience and it was my experience too.
So I started googling to see whether St Augustine had made this point or whether some leading figure in the church had described that one of the ways to God is the perception that the devil is real, therefore God is real.
But I couldn't find one.
But I think that for a lot of awake people, that has been the experience, that they go through the stage where they go, blimey, the world is run by paedophile Satanists.
And they actually do sacrifice children to the devil.
I mean, regardless of whether the devil exists or not, they do sacrifice children to the devil, and they do harvest their adrenochrome, and they do all these things, and they kill people.
And they assassinate presidents and they and they fake moon landings and they and they lie to us about everything and nothing that we did the illusion that we have any manner of say in over our future is is a nonsense is just the left right and just so you go through all this and you think we are just totally buggered.
This is awful.
I mean, I may as well just spend the rest of my days in a pit of despair and then You go to the stage where you go, hang on a second, maybe this is all as... haven't I read about this before?
Hang on, isn't this in the last book of the Bible that people have mentioned to me?
The Mark of the Beast we used to joke about at school, you know, Neighbour of the Beast, 667, whatever it is.
And then it all starts to click, doesn't it?
It does click and it's the only place, well for me, that it was the only place that you arrive at where You don't have any more yes-but-why, yes-but-why, yes-but-why questions.
When you're trying to figure out, look, what the hell is going on?
What are these people actually trying to do?
What's their motivation?
And I think a lot of people will go down so far and they feel quite satisfied.
And, you know, it's money and it's control and it's even depopulation.
They say, well, they want to depopulate the world.
But there is an idea that it's a bit like the Thanos argument.
For those who don't know who Thanos is, he's the...
He's the guy in the Marvel comics who's a kind of supervillain, a giant purple man with a chin like a wrinkly scrotum.
And Thanos' whole thing is that he's decided that there's too much life in the universe and his destiny is to acquire these magic stones which will enable him to reduce all life in the known universe by 50%.
And he thinks this will save everybody, it will save all life on all planets and all of that.
And the thing that makes Thanos an interesting villain is he's genuinely convinced that this is a real problem and he's the only person who can do something about it.
And he's conflicted, you know, he doesn't enjoy the fact that he's got to do it but he thinks he has to.
And that obviously makes him a relatively interesting villain.
And I think there are a lot of people who feel the same about it.
They think yeah like David Attenborough yeah let's let's say David Attenborough is the Thanos of art.
Because he cares but he but he care he wants to kill us all in a caring way.
That's right yeah and he's also got a wrinkly chin um but they they think people think well these figures like like Bill Gates or Klaus Schwab and they They know that they're killing everybody.
You know, they know that these injections are poisonous and millions of people are going to die.
But they're genuinely convinced that if they don't do this, it's all over and humanity will be ruined and everything.
And they're making a bit of money along the way and they're trying to implement this system of total control so they can make sure it doesn't get out of hand again.
That's as far as most people want to go.
And I suspect I was there for maybe six months.
um you think yeah I can see this then but but you're still left with ah but hang on why is there is there so much ritual involved in what they're doing why while they're while they're doing this at the same time um are they We're playing around with our ideas of gender.
Why are they trying to destroy the family?
Why have they got a war on Christianity?
Why are they inverting all of our most important moral structures and principles?
It doesn't add up.
If this is purely a practical thing, where they just need to get rid of some people and start again, The other stuff doesn't make any sense.
It only makes sense when you understand that these are not practical people.
They aren't dealing with a problem they believe to be real, with a practical solution.
They believe in something.
They really, really believe that they are engaged in some kind of spiritual battle.
Once you plug in the idea that these people are trying to destroy The divine spark that exists in all people, they are attempting to sever our link with God.
Because they think if they can destroy God's creation, us, in that way, they win this age-old battle.
That's what I think is going on here.
I think the killing of billions of people is just for the sake of killing billions of people.
It's a ritualistic sacrifice, it's what they do all the time.
It's the only way that makes sense to me.
And also I think, you know, although it's overwhelming, if you understand that what we're all doing here is playing a key role in an ancient battle between good and evil, you don't really worry about what the meaning of life is anymore, because who needs more meaning than that, really?
Yeah, it does add a bit of sparkle, doesn't it?
It does.
I found that my life feels so much more meaningful.
Like you, I was in journalism, but not really knowing what I was there for, other than getting a really well-paid column.
That was what I was aiming for, I think.
I kept thinking, one day, the day is going to come when nice Lord Rothermere, or somebody, is going to say, James, we think it's about time you had the million pound a year column, the me column, where you can talk about what you want to and you'll be able to live like a banker for the rest of your life and say what you like.
A, it wouldn't have worked like that.
I mean, essentially, they own your soul when you've got to ride their hobby horses, not your own hobby horses.
Exactly.
Misfelt.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost like they know.
I think the reason I never rose up the system as high as I wanted to rise was because the baddies just knew.
They knew already.
They knew before I did that I did not have the makings of a servant of evil.
I don't know how they saw it.
I mean, whether it's my relentless piss-taking, my sort of puckish spirit, my reluctance to kind of obey orders, To drown kittens?
Yeah, I think that.
I mean, I think there are probably subtle little instances where somebody is probably taking note of how you respond and what you agree to and what you won't agree to.
They all acknowledge it's a game.
You know, I was told several times, look, you've got to learn to play the game.
They don't hide that.
Everyone admits that.
You play along and then you get promoted and you win some awards and everyone's happy with you.
We might put your cartoon on the front page sometimes.
But it's all a game.
And if you ever stray outside the rules of the game, they really come down hard on you.
Um, and then obviously that means there are certain things you aren't allowed to know and you, um, yeah, you won't get told.
I mean, I, who knows how many people, this is the thing about, um, we're in this system where I have no doubt at all that right at the top there are a group of people, you know, we can speculate about who they are and, but I think
There is a group of people at the top who absolutely know the truth about everything, who have made this plan, who believe that they're on the side of evil, that evil is going to win, and that's why they're doing all of this.
But below that point, as you go down, There will be a lot of people who are like Thanos, like I was just describing, who are either just too stupid or too idealist or whatever to understand and see it for what it is.
They are just playing a game.
They can be manipulated.
They want money and control, sure.
The people at the top rely on that to make it all happen.
There's just no doubt.
This is a plan.
You have to recognize that this is a plan.
Somebody made this plan.
It's one of the most ingenious plans ever devised.
And we're only at the beginning still.
It's only beginning to unfold.
The good thing is that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
We're the enemy in this case.
So I'm sure that we have frustrated it at points already.
I'm sure they are not where they wanted to be now.
Well the plan, their plan, this is another thing I think you must believe, their plan is destined to fail and their plan is part of an even higher plan.
Which will ultimately see them lose.
We have to believe that, don't we?
I do believe that.
Well, it is written.
We have to endure an awful lot of crap first.
Yeah.
I'm not looking forward to that bit.
No.
But what can you do?
I think it's not... I also think it's quite important That people understand that none of this means that we're supposed to just twiddle our thumbs and wait.
That isn't part of the plan.
And I know some Christians do take this view that, well, OK, if it's end times, and if it's Revelation or whatever, and God's going to come and sort all this out, I don't need to get involved.
I don't need to do anything.
That's, I think, really missing the point.
You have to always engage.
If you know you can do something to oppose wickedness, you have to do it.
You can't just sit it out.
You can't just wait to be rescued.
I think Tolkien...
Can we talk about Tolkien for a minute?
We should talk about Tolkien.
Tell me about Tolkien.
Well, you know the eagles in Lord of the Rings?
You know there's this thing that everyone likes to joke about with the Lord of the Rings of, well, obviously they could have just given the ring to an eagle and he could have flown straight to Mount Doom and dropped it in.
And then people say, well, yeah, you know, he couldn't have done that because then the story can't happen.
And, you know, you don't have a book and all the wonderful messages that are interwoven there.
But I, I don't see that at all with the eagles.
I think it's quite obvious that the eagles are a metaphor.
I mean, it's pretty clear winged, big winged creatures.
They're a metaphor for the forces of heaven.
Who very deliberately do not get involved in things until a certain point.
You know, they occasionally help Gandalf get off the tower and things like that.
I thought it was a moth?
They stay out of it.
Or the moth is a sort of messenger for the eagles, isn't it, I think.
Like a mini angel.
Moth is a cherub.
But then what happens?
Right at the end of the story, it's only when the people, the men and the elves and the dwarves, have set their differences aside and are prepared to die and have really no hope of victory, and they stand in front of the Black Gate and just say, we'll just take whatever comes out and we'll just Make one last stand.
That's when the eagles show up.
That's when the eagles obviously think, okay, now you're worth saving.
I think it's a really interesting idea that if help is coming, we do have to do something to demonstrate that we're worth it.
Do you understand what I mean?
Do you want me to depress you, Bob?
Okay, go on.
Really depress you.
You're aware that the eagle is an Illuminati symbol of power, which is why the double-headed eagles on the dollar bill, and it recurs through, I mean, it's a Masonic symbol.
I've got a, rather worryingly, a chandelier with double eagles heads on it.
Don't know where that came from.
Yeah.
And this is an even more depressing thing.
Tolkien is required reading for acolytes of the various satanic orders.
And the Lord of the Rings is a key part of that.
of their, you know, it's like, it's like their Bible.
And I'm gonna send you an essay, I only discovered this the other day.
I love Tolkien, but that's the problem.
One is drawn to things which are maybe bad for you.
Although I didn't know it was bad for me at the time.
The same with C.S.
Lewis.
I mean, this is for a separate podcast, possibly with somebody who's looked into it.
I'm just, since you brought it up, I thought I'd mention it.
So somebody contacted me via my website and he sent me this essay which had been written by a former, you know, somebody who was involved in the New Age and in Luciferianism and stuff and the occult.
And this guy had converted to Christianity and he said, uh-uh.
He said, I've read C.S.
Lewis and I've read Tolkien and you have no idea how riddled with occult symbolism that they are.
All that talk about mere Christianity on C.S.
Lewis's part.
He's actually, if you read it carefully, you can see that he's inserting these ideas which are not Christian.
Okay.
I'll leave it there because I think this is for a separate conversation.
But the point I was going to make earlier on to you was I think, I agree with you up to a point about, you know, that our job as Christians is not to be passive.
But I think that, I don't know about you, but I think God has sort of pretty much delineated what my role is going to be.
He hasn't said, James, I really need you to perfect your explosive skills so you can go running, you can go blowing up 5G towers.
Or, James, I want you storming those barricades.
That's a very important point and it's also probably why my talking thing was a bit clumsy because what I think is also really important and part of the test is that we go through all of this and we witness all of this evil and we must manage to fight it and oppose it without becoming violent ourselves.
And I know that, you know, that I've struggled with that at various points.
You know, there have been times when you just think, oh, I wish, you know, someone would just do this person in or, you know, just take them out.
Wouldn't that be great?
But we can't... Which one is Psalm 37?
There's a line in Psalms, a key thing, where it says, leave off from wrath, let go displeasure, fret not thyself, else thou shalt be moved to do evil.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
It's all there.
If this is a battle for our souls, we can't go there.
I think it's absolutely what they're hoping for.
So it's a balance, you know, don't do nothing but don't start trying to blow people up either.
Exactly.
I was thinking Bob, because both you and I like a rollie, should we I'm going to go and make a rollie and make a cup of tea, and we'll smoke it together here.
Which would make me very unpopular, because I'm sitting in the guest bedroom at the moment, and we never smoke in the house.
I can't smoke up here.
I'll get into trouble.
Oh, OK.
I won't do it either.
Shall we go out and have one?
And then we can do the furore thing?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, we'll deal with the topic.
We don't have to.
We don't have to interrupt.
We can always... I associate you with companionly roll-ups.
I don't normally smoke in... No, normally I'd make one for you, but we're a little bit too far away for that.
Yeah.
So shall we just go for five minutes and then we'll come back and we'll talk about the Netanyahu thing.
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So how is your fag break?
It was good.
Yeah.
I'm trying to cut down a bit because it's got a bit out of control.
I've been smoking a bit too much.
Oh!
I'm sorry to have been instrumental in your breaking your cigarette fast.
It's too much smoking of cigarettes, you know, and outside pubs deliberating over lines and cartoons and things like that.
But you know, I've got a lot of time for the cigarette rabbit hole.
I do think that probably tobacco, pure organic tobacco, is quite beneficial in a lot of ways.
It's just hard to get hold of.
And jolly expensive if you're used to paying duty-free prices.
You never get whatever it's called, that Indian What is it called, the organic tobacco?
I know what you mean.
Whatever it is, anyway.
I was going to take...
You can grow it yourself, it's legal to grow tobacco yourself.
And my brother's been growing properly organic tobacco.
Which is great, it's really nice, but it's not... You can't make it rollable for cigarettes, so you have to smoke it through a pipe.
And I don't know if I'm ready for that.
Like Tolkien.
Well, yeah, exactly like Tolkien.
Perhaps we should avoid it.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I don't know.
I wanted to tell you a funny story which occurred to me as I was smoking.
So this is a measure of how far I've changed.
Everything about my life has changed.
A few years ago, I had this really, really, really bad experience where our financial advisor was a crook and he took us for all we had and we lost pretty much everything.
And in my the dark years that follows because these things linger with you for a very long time.
Yeah, and some days I would be so despairing that I would go outside in the middle of the day for a cigarette.
We're talking one cigarette, Mark Hugh, and as I smoked this cigarette, I could sort of feel the cancer danger that I was courting.
I was kind of seeking oblivion.
Just kind of seeking oblivion through the, and now I have my midday fag and I do it with, I mean, I, I, I, I smoke two cigarettes a day normally in a, in the course of a normal day, two cigarettes.
And now I do it with joy because I don't buy into the cigarettes will give you cancer psyop.
I think it is just, it's part of the con.
They don't want us to smoke because smokers are clubbable.
They talk.
I mean, I think that the reason I wanted to have a cigarette, which I don't normally, is because talking to you triggered that thing that I'm having a chat with a mate and what would really go with it?
Oh, I know, a nice cigarette.
Yeah, exactly.
And again, you have to acknowledge the fact that the people doing this to us clearly don't mind people getting cancer in that they've just ensured that about half the world are probably going to get some form of cancer in the next 10 years.
So it doesn't really add up that if smoking cigarettes is the main cause of cancer they'd be desperate to stop people from doing it.
That is a very good logical inference, yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I think we should talk about the Furore.
That greeted your most recent card.
I mean, you've been on very strong form.
I mean, I love the one of the Roman Baths.
That was fantastic, where you sort of, you took out a few of your hate figures, both major and quite obscure.
That was satisfying.
But it was as nothing to your, tell me the story about your Troublesome cartoon.
Yeah, it's been an interesting week.
It's interesting you mentioned the bloodbath one because I think that was very important for me because I wanted to really sum up the whole thing as I saw it in one image.
And I thought, how can I do that?
And actually, I was trying to figure out You know, a way of doing that.
And I took my children to Bath to see a play, and we walked past the Roman baths in Bath, and it just struck me.
I thought, well, that would be a good idea.
Let's put them all in a Roman baths type place.
But, you know, it's all blood, and they're bathing in the blood of innocents, and I can just fill it with all the favourite characters.
And obviously, it's an excuse to have a lot of nudity, which I enjoy.
And I can do now.
But I'm sort of conscious now that what I'm doing is producing a series of images that are kind of designed to be seen as a progressing narrative, if you like.
I'm not sure if I hadn't have done the bloodbath one before Christmas, I may not have done my most recent one.
I felt like it was quite a good follow-on in the context of that Bloodbath one.
Not that it doesn't work in isolation, but if people were to bother to go back and look at all of the work I've produced over the last few years, obviously it gives a different context to things I'm doing now.
So yes, this most recent cartoon.
Now, I don't want to do too much explaining of the cartoon itself because, well, it's supposed to speak on its own and stand alone.
And also, there are plenty of people online who've explained it quite well and pointed out what I'm trying to do with it.
But I suppose the first thing to say is not everyone got it.
Obviously.
And that did not surprise me.
So the reaction it got in terms of the furore, as you say, the criticism and anger was entirely anticipated on my part.
Probably truer to say it was actually intended on my part.
And in many ways, the reaction to that cartoon Sort of provided the punchline.
The punchline might not be the right word because it's not really a funny one, but it certainly underlined the point I was making with it.
This might surprise people, but as a cartoonist, I'm very interested in irony, James.
I tend to seek out irony and then show it to people in The best visual way I can think of and hypocrisy and you know I think the cognitive dissonance we're seeing now and that's leading to all this nonsense is precisely because people have lost the ability to recognize irony and hypocrisy.
So that cartoon is steeped in irony.
There's several layers of it and then what happened was after I put it out Quite helpfully, lots of people piled on extra layers of irony on top.
For example, one of the things that the cartoon is questioning, and one of the things everyone has been talking about, is this idea of legality.
What's permissible?
What's allowed?
What laws are being broken here or not broken?
What special laws might apply to this group of people that wouldn't apply to others, for example?
And it wasn't lost on me the fact that lots of individuals started to ask, well, to point out, well, you know, according to the law, this cartoon, you're not allowed to draw this cartoon, you know, and they started phoning the police and things like that.
The cartoon was showing something that's clearly ought to be illegal to do, that they all agreed with.
And their response to it was to report me to the police because they were suddenly very concerned about what the law said, about what sort of drawings someone might be allowed to do.
It's been really fascinating.
And yeah, I think You know, this situation that we've been looking at, that's been occurring, has been very much to do with something absolutely inexcusable happening that can never be justified.
Whatever you think may have happened back in October, or who you think did it, or how disgusting it was, it's pretty clear to me.
A lot like the lockdown argument that nothing justifies this reaction.
This can never be okay.
But all that's happened is people shout a word at anyone who's trying to highlight this or criticise what's going on.
And I thought, well, let's really make these people own their position and let's do something that will make them all shout this word.
And obviously, yeah, one of the things that I think a lot of people perhaps feel like they've caught me out, which is also interesting, when they say, well, look, you've invoked this trope, this awful visual trope, as if somehow I'd have got this far without knowing what these historic visual tropes are and how they've been used again.
Very, very intentional.
Because another irony that I found fascinating was...
What happens when you've got a visual trope that's been used historically to persecute people and is obviously wrong and importantly was commissioned by a state who had an agenda and used as propaganda and this trope was supposed to represent an entire people and say all of these people
are horrible, monstrous child killers, which is obviously absurd and awful and wrong.
And then you think, well, imagine if, what would happen if somebody claiming to represent those people, claiming to, you know, and arguably the most powerful representative of those people in the world,
What would happen if somebody like that embodied that trope and actually started doing the thing that the trope suggested about those people?
Surely the response to that would be for everyone who thought that trope was awful and disgusting, which it was, would be absolutely outraged and say, you can't do this, you have become the very
image that we have been fighting against for all these years and it's disgusting and you can't do it and we're all really offended people within this group of people and without but that's not what we saw happening what actually happened was when they see the trope manifest in real life an actual person an individual They say, oh, this is okay because he's a part of that group.
Yes.
Well put.
It's not a generic, you know, and I haven't drawn a generic character.
I've drawn a real man who is doing real things, is acting in the world.
And it's very interesting to me that it's so upside down, that that is the response it gets.
Well indeed, but historically cartoonists have not been known for things like satire and making extreme shocking points which take the viewer aback.
Have they?
No, not at all.
No, I'm definitely the first cartoonist to ever do that, yeah.
Well, a lot of people seem to... Because I was thinking actually, It's very interesting as well.
You were describing how that... Another layer of the irony, of course, is that an awful lot of the people who have a problem with me now and have a problem with this image were the first to come out whenever there was any problem with a Mohammed cartoon, you know, were the first to come out and say, this is awful, We cartoonists are bastions of free speech.
We cannot start having rules about what cartoonists are allowed to draw.
No cartoonist should ever be forbidden from criticizing a religion like this.
And they are the ones who reported me to the police for it.
Which is, you know, again, interesting.
The idea as well, I think it's very odd this notion that you can have visual tropes so that you might invoke a visual trope as an artist, particularly as a satirical artist, and not be actually using that trope to say what it was originally meant to say, but to point out an irony and make a satirical point.
If we're going to say no, that's not possible.
No artist can ever do that.
It's a pretty sad state of affairs.
It's quite restrictive for satire, I think.
I was going to say that you were talking about your cartoons being a sequence, you know, the bath scene and now this one.
I was thinking this is like The Rake's Progress or Gin Lane.
It tells a story.
Yeah, it tells a story and obviously things are very complicated now because some people have just joined the story.
For example, there are a lot of people who think understand that cartoon and think it's fine and have interpreted it correctly, you wouldn't necessarily agree with anything else I've said.
They might have bought into all of the lockdowns and the masks and the Covid nonsense and they're not viewing the world in the same way that I do and it starts to get very complicated but the thing is I'm I'm totally free agent now, James.
I've got myself into a position where I don't work for anybody, and nobody can tell me what I can draw or what I can't draw.
I can't tell you the number of times over the years when I've submitted ideas to editors who've said, ah, this is a bit too clever, what you're doing here.
People won't get it.
It used to really frustrate me.
I'm not going to dumb down my stuff for fear that some people won't be advanced in their thinking enough to actually understand it.
I say what I want to say in the way that I want to say it.
And that's what I've done.
I think a lot of people are probably annoyed that They can't get me fired from anything or...
Because that's already happened, you know.
I've already been cancelled and cancelled and cancelled again.
You've been bedded.
Yeah.
And it comes back to the thing you were saying about, you know, being a lone wolf, if you like.
Somebody said this to me right at the beginning.
Well, the problem with freedom fighters is they always think of themselves as lone wolves and they don't want to band together and actually, you know, form organisations and things.
I always had a sense from around the time I was going to lose my job that I have to stay as independent as I possibly can be now.
I've got to just be responsible for me and what I do and not have anybody else influencing me and not feel responsible for anyone else.
And, you know, that's what I do.
I sit up here and I have my ideas and I draw them and I put them out.
You know, there are people saying, who published this?
We have to boycott the publisher.
And no one's published it.
I do my work and I put it out.
That's the way it works now.
It's interesting because we're in this completely new world where somebody like me can still retain a huge audience and millions of people can see what I do and it's not published anywhere apart from my platforms.
Yeah, you mentioned this in your excellent stage show which I enjoyed very much.
But am I right in thinking that there is some organisation which pays you just to... they enable you to be able to put out your cartoons into the world?
Is that how it works?
It was working like that for a year for 2022.
I was employed by the Democracy Fund in Canada who just paid me a small salary to produce three cartoons a week.
And the deal was that I had to make them free to any publisher in the world to download and use without charge, which I was very happy about and happy to do.
Lots of them did use them.
The agreement was always that if I didn't need their money anymore because they're a charity, we'd stop the arrangement.
So at the end of that year, I said, I think I can go it alone now, you know, thanks very much and we parted ways very amicably.
But actually there was no editorial control there whatsoever.
My brief was just produce three cartoons a week on human rights and the collapse of democracy and basically everything I'd been drawing anyway.
I never had any phone calls or emails or anything, it was just I just produced the work and they were happy with it.
Now the only change really is I'm free to cover anything at all and I can decide when I put stuff out.
So I don't have the pressure of having to do three a week.
It means I can do stuff like the Bloodbath one and the Spiritual War one which maybe take two or three weeks to produce.
Which is really good.
I mean, I never thought I'd be able to do that.
I can actually create completely different pieces of art that you'd never be able to do if you were still working for a publication and having to produce stuff in six hours.
No matter how good you are, there's stuff you just can't do, you know, in that time.
I mean, that's really happy making.
I mean, again, it's proof that you can make these decisions, that huge decision that you took essentially to engineer your departure from the Telegraph.
And take a huge leap, and it turns out to be the best thing.
Tell me, briefly, because I've got to do another podcast thing quite shortly.
So, what we'll do is we'll have another chat, you know, not far hence, because we can just rap for hours.
But tell me about the experience of, I mean, how much grief have you been given?
What's it been like?
I mean, it's funny in a way because lots of the people who know me and care about me and agree with what I did have been sending me messages saying, you know, are you okay, hope you're alright, I'm thinking about you and things which Thank you, by the way, to everyone who's done that, and I'm fine.
I've been fine.
I mean, it's been quite a normal week for me.
I've just been going on as normal and checking in now and again to see what's happening online.
Most of this stuff just happens on social media.
And obviously, there's a... The way these things always work is immediately, in the first 24 hours, you just get blanket attack.
An outrage, and it felt as though the whole world was talking about me and my cartoon.
I obviously took the decision to sit it out and get on with things, because my bit's done, my comment's been made.
Sort of after 24 hours has passed, the other side then picks up on it and you get a lot more support and you get a lot of people saying, hang on, you know, this is obviously what he's saying with this, you've missed the point and it's been interesting.
But, I mean, obviously there are a lot of characters who were meant to be on our side and were supposed to understand everything that really took against it and um have very and they very much led the charge against me and trying to make the rest of the world aware that this has happened it's always the interesting thing
people find a picture really really disgusting and they're the ones who ensure that the whole world sees it and shares it around everywhere um but most of those people i already knew didn't get it and really those are the people i was aiming it at um and they like i say they made the point for me in the way that they responded um no
Nobody argued, this was another fascinating thing, all the people who had a problem with it, nobody argued with the reality I was depicting in terms of what was going on.
So nobody was sort of saying, well it's really offensive because No children are dying there, you know, because that's not what they think.
They do think that and they agree with it and they really are standing by that position.
Their response was just to say you're not allowed to have a problem with this, you're not allowed to criticise it, you're certainly not allowed to criticise it in any kind of satirical, ironic, clever, layered way.
I just, I think, we can't, we cannot keep playing this ridiculous label game.
I mean, and I don't want to, I don't want to get into the whole, what is antisemitism thing.
It's so, so boring and ridiculous.
But I think in general, we are in a world where People are either given labels or give themselves various labels all the time.
I'm trans so I can do this or I can promote this idea or I can make these demands or I'm a doctor so I can do these things and I can tell you these things and immediately People say, well you can't criticise this person because you're criticising their label and this label means they have special privileges and you're not able to engage with them in an honest way.
You can't debate them, you can't criticise anything they say.
I won't do that.
If somebody promotes disgusting ideas, or makes ridiculous demands, or does horrific things, I don't care what you call yourself, you're fair game.
I will criticise you.
And I'm fed up with this idea that certain people have certain labels, and they can do whatever the hell they like.
We've got to get past that.
Yeah.
Before we go, it's gone mega, hasn't it?
How big has it gone, the cartoon?
Well, it's hard to gauge because it goes across all the different channels and everything.
I think it's about three and a half million people have seen it on Twitter now.
I mean, I've gained a lot of followers, so that's one thing.
Well done.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, it's... I'm very pleased with How that cartoon has gone down.
That cartoon did exactly what I wanted it to do.
And I think it's proved the point that I was trying to make.
I'm not going to withdraw it.
I'm not going to apologize for it.
You know, I stand by it.
And I hope that more people might look at it again.
And think a bit harder about what I'm trying to do with it.
And, you know, anyone who knows me, who has ever met me, I think understands that my problem is not with any group of people or any race or any creed.
I am on the side of ordinary people.
...who want to live freely, get on with their lives all over the world.
I've spent the last three years doing everything I possibly can to oppose tyranny and persecution and enslavement and...
Democide and genocide.
I put everything on the line.
I nearly lost my career.
I nearly lost my house.
I've had threats.
I've had, you know, I've staked a lot on this fight.
My problem is with heads of state.
That's why there are three heads of state in that image.
My problem is with powerful people who are seeking to oppress.
The decent, ordinary people of the world.
That is my purpose.
That's my fight.
Yeah.
It's pretty obvious if you look through my work.
Bob, I've so totally enjoyed this.
This hasn't disappointed.
I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.
I've really enjoyed it.
We'll have a rematch.
Tell us where we can find your stuff.
So, all my stuff's on my website, which is bobmoran.co.uk.
And then I'm on Twitter, at Bob's Cartoons.
I am on Instagram as well, I think.
I think I'm bobmoran underscore artist on Instagram.
And you can come and see my show again.
I am going to do my show again in March, but we're not releasing details yet about where it's happening, but there will be details at some point.
Highly recommended, if anyone's tempted.
Really good.
It's great.
You do a Rolf Harris, if that's not rude.
You actually draw on stage.
I do a Rolf Harris and there was a lot of decision to actually reference the fact that I do a Rolf Harris in the show.
Yeah, it's a proper show.
It's not an exhibition.
It's not a talk.
It's a proper stage show with live drawing and a band and music and a big screen and everything.
It's great.
I've got to go, but thank you, Bob Moran.
That's been brilliant.
If you want to support me, and I really appreciate it if you do, you get early access to my podcasts and you get access to my archive of writing.
I mean, actually, my writings.
Some people say it's better than my podcast, because that's what I've been doing for longer.
But either way, if you want to support me, support the cause.
My sub-stack is probably the place to go.
Sub-stack or locals.
You can buy me a coffee.
Go to my website jamessterlingpole.co.uk and do... I encourage you to support my sponsors.
I mean, I think Monetary Metals, for example, is a really good product.
I don't advertise rubbish.
I think that the companies I do often offer, they often recommend ways out of this mess we're in, whether it's
financial solutions or health solutions, so do please support them and help yourself at the same time and help me and Thank you very much for your support, and thank you again Bob Thanks, I'm pleased the deling Bob finally happened The deling Bob and and the live show will happen it totally will because we you know we make sweet music together Bob we do
