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March 2, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:16:51
Joe Rogan Experience #1613 - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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ayaan hirsi ali
02:18:36
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joe rogan
53:47
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unidentified
The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day So first of all, thanks for doing this I really appreciate it.
joe rogan
Thanks for being here.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, thank you so much.
joe rogan
So, you were saying that you're having a hard time getting people to talk to you.
ayaan hirsi ali
Not exactly.
I'm saying that when I had other books published, my publisher would say, here's a list of places you're going to promote the book.
And it was quite striking that this year it wasn't.
I published my last book in 2015. It's called Heretic.
And I was sent to, you know, MSNBC, all of the mainstream media agencies, CNN. It was all over the place.
They said, we want you to go there.
And I went there.
And this year, I just have to do podcasts, it looks like.
joe rogan
So what has been the response from these mainstream sources, whether it's MSNBC or CNN or any of these places?
They just aren't interested?
ayaan hirsi ali
I don't know exactly what the communication is between them and HarperCollins, and HarperCollins is my publisher.
But I had one invitation from a magazine called BUST, B-U-S-T. It's for girls and women.
joe rogan
Is that about breasts?
BUST as in breasts?
ayaan hirsi ali
Is that what it means?
I don't know.
Okay.
I've been told it's a magazine for very young people and it's widely distributed, so it's something that's popular.
And if you come out with a book about women, well, Bust would be a good place to go to.
And then I was told...
So they had a journalist lined up and a photographer.
It was going to be a big deal.
And then we got a story saying, sorry, it's not going to happen after all.
Because Ayan supported J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter...
When, in my view, JK Rowling came out in support of women, but I'm told that I make the people who read that particular magazine unsafe or that there's a potential that I could make them unsafe.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the phrase that gets used.
Make them unsafe, or make them feel unsafe, or put them in danger.
First of all, JK Rowling's statements, they were not nearly as controversial as people made them out to be, for whatever reason.
Do you remember exactly what she said?
ayaan hirsi ali
She said a number of things.
I think she challenged people like she and myself being called people who menstruate.
And she did do it, you know, with that British sense of humor.
So what are we called these days?
And she had woman spelled in different ways.
I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it because I only saw the spelling.
joe rogan
I like when they put the X. Yes.
Wim-ex-en.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, Wim-ex-en or whatever.
Aren't we even allowed to have a name?
joe rogan
People who menstruate.
I'm sure there used to be a word for these people.
Someone help me out.
Wim-ben, Wumpund, Wumud.
Opinion.
Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate.
Yeah.
Well, her along with Martina Navatrolova, which is another person who got attacked by the woke mob, where you just go, wow, how far is this gone?
Where a prominent lesbian woman, who was one of the first out athletes ever, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, who says it's not fair for biological males to compete against women in these sports.
And she gets labeled like the most vicious bigot alt-right person you could imagine.
You're like, how far has this stuff gone?
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's gone too far.
And for women like me, it's gone way too far.
I mean, where I come from, most women are actually fighting for the most basic rights, rights to be safe, not to be killed.
Where I come from, people, women, are subjected to femicide.
They don't like you, they kill you.
You violate the honor, they kill you.
They take away your genitals.
So there's a very basic set of rights that we don't even have that we're fighting for.
And so to get to a place where in the advanced world, we are told, you can't even be called by your own name.
You know, we've got to figure people who menstruate.
When I read that, I just, first I thought it was a joke.
And I thought I could laugh it off.
And then I came around and I thought, this is not a laughing matter.
We are going to have to stand up for at least what we've achieved in the West and hope to drag people in the developing world to come to where we are.
But our name as woman, plural women, is not going to be taken away.
And I admire J.K. Rowling for taking that fight on.
joe rogan
Well, I mean, she just made a joke.
I mean, that's all it was.
It was just, like you said, in British humor, you know?
ayaan hirsi ali
Humor is gone now in these discussions.
I want to make it very clear that I think that people who identify as trans, transgender, whatever they want to call themselves, I'm a proponent of Them getting, you know, their dignity, their freedom, live as they please.
And if there's anything I can do, anything you can do, surely we must do that.
But it must not be zero sum.
joe rogan
At the expense of biological women.
ayaan hirsi ali
It can't be zero sum.
It can't be that transgender people can only thrive and flourish only if they push down women.
joe rogan
I don't even think they think of it that way.
I think they just think that you're going to alienate the people that aren't biologically women.
Or alienate the people, in this case, the J.K. Rowling thing.
People who are biologically women but who identify as male.
it's just gotten so complicated And I don't think that they think they're doing a bad thing.
I think they think they're standing up for trans people.
But by saying, you know, women who menstruate, for the vast majority of human beings, you're talking about women.
Or, excuse me, by saying people who menstruate, you're talking about women.
And to deny that and say, no, we're just going to call it people who menstruate, for the very small amount of people who aren't Biologically women.
Or don't think of themselves as biologically women.
They think of themselves as trans.
It's just...
It's so strange that this is...
This can get someone in trouble.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's very strange that it can get someone in trouble.
Half the human population are female.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
Women, girls.
So there is, I think, a way of lifting up people who are transgender...
To come out as they are and be who they are and feel comfortable in their skins and for the rest of us to accept that without diminishing women.
But the way to do it for us as women is to insist.
Yes, we are women.
I'm not going to be called all the names that they try to call me radical, terrible.
They have all sorts of labels that they've produced these days, but I'm not going to accept that.
I'm not going to accept being diminished or diminishing my thoughts, but at the same time say, you guys, you can move forward.
Maybe in some ways we could actually work together.
But the way to do that is to have parameters around which you can work.
There has to be common truth.
There has to be objective truth.
I am one of the people who let them persuade me, but right now I think they're just two genders, male and female.
And from a biological perspective, that's all we have.
Should we talk about that?
Yes.
If there are people who feel that they're born in the wrong body and that they want to transition and they're grown-ups, please, by all means, go ahead and do that.
But I think it is dangerous to adapt fact and reality to the emotions and And ideologies of the day.
It just won't work.
It's going to cause even more chaos, even more Confrontations and conflicts.
And the only way to get us out of this is to have honest, proper conversations informed by science, informed by objectivity.
There is an objective truth.
There is something that is real and factual.
joe rogan
There's a conformity that is being enforced with this kind of language and that's part of what we're dealing with in our current woke dilemma is that people are being enforced to behave and communicate in a way that fits in with this ideology despite Whether or not it's backed by biological science.
If someone has had sex with a woman and fathered children, multiple children, and then decides that they are now a woman themselves, people will say, well, they've always been a woman.
Well, that doesn't even make sense.
Maybe they felt they should have been a woman.
Maybe they feel like they're in the wrong body.
But you can't say they've always been a woman.
But that is the conformity.
When you're applying the rules of the ideology, that's what you're supposed to say.
She's always been a woman.
And you're like, okay, well, we're in a weird place.
How did she get a woman pregnant?
What kind of magic are we talking about?
Now we're not talking about science anymore.
Now we're not talking about biology.
This ideology is forcing biological science to conform to it rather than just looking at it in terms of these objective realities.
ayaan hirsi ali
That's right.
And so it is up to the wider population to object to that.
You just mentioned somebody who fathered children.
In order to have an objective analysis of that, we look at paternity issues.
If you If a woman claims that you fathered her child and you didn't, there's a way of, through science, we have a way of finding out whether you're the father or not.
And so there's universal agreement on what that test yields.
That's science.
Before you got me into your studio, you had me get tested for COVID as you did for others.
That's objective truth.
We have to get tested so that you and I both feel safe and we're here.
So when it comes to science, we can't pick and choose and say, you know, when it comes to certain things that suit me, I agree to objective truth and science.
But then with the other things that don't suit me, when I wanted to pretend that there are 10 or 12 or 1400 gender differences, in that case, science is racist, and science is wrong, and there is no science.
It's all about subjectivity.
And I think it's for the wider population to come out and say, you can't pick and choose.
And I would say, in many ways, that's the basis of science, is that it's not in anyone's favor.
Science doesn't understand ideology.
This virus, whatever it is, the Wuhan virus, I don't care what name you give it, but whether it infects you or it infects me, it doesn't care.
And the scientists who are after, trying to figure out what is it.
And then go from there, once you understand, once you have a name for it, and you understand what the problem is, then you start trying to figure out how to deal with it.
That's what science offers us, and I think it is very, very important that we come out as a nation, as a people, anyone who values objective truth and science to say, that's something I'm not willing to let go.
I am compassionate.
I feel a lot of empathy for people who want to transition from one gender to the other, who think that they are born in the wrong body and want to do everything they can to get in a body that makes them comfortable and happy, but not at the cost of science.
joe rogan
Is this particularly offensive to you?
I mean, it must be because of your background.
You briefly talked about that, but for people who don't know you, I would like you to explain your upbringing, where you came from, and how you had to literally risk your life to escape that.
ayaan hirsi ali
So I was born in Somalia in 1969 and growing up in the 70s my family went to Saudi Arabia, we went to Ethiopia, we went to Kenya, that's where I learned English, and then finally in 1992 I ended up in the Netherlands.
But if you ask me in the context of science to tell you about those years between, you know, when I could walk and talk and understand what was going around me until about 1992 when I left, I come from territories where superstition is the thing to do, you know.
My father left us in 1982. He left us in Kenya.
He went back to Ethiopia to fight for what he felt was his calling.
Democracy and a just system for the Somali people.
But in Kenya, my mother, who was with my grandmother, her mother's mother, And they felt abandoned in a strange country and they didn't understand what was going on and they had the three of us.
The three of us, that is my older brother and my younger sister.
And as children go, we were terrible.
And I remember my mother going off to see witch doctors and ask them, How do I deal with my daily life?
And those witch doctors would want one thing, which was whatever money she could give them.
And if she couldn't give money, then it would be her goat, or it would be something that they treasured.
And in Kenya, I'm 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old, and all the time when she goes to these people, all I want to say to her is, This is superstition.
You're wasting your money.
You're wasting your time.
Leave them alone.
My mother couldn't read or write, so I didn't know a way of expressing that.
And then soon after, in 1985, I was 15 years old, when members of the Muslim Brotherhood came along.
And they finally convinced my mother and grandmother and all the women in our neighborhoods, do not reach out to the The superstitious.
Don't go to the witch doctors.
Come to God, the one and only.
Read the Quran.
They can't read the Quran, so they have to trust in what he tells them.
The Hadith, Mohammed's way of doing things.
And in a way, I felt grateful to the people who had shepherded the grown-up women of my life away from these superstitious people to the one and true and only God.
It just happened to be another superstition, better organized, more slick.
joe rogan
But at the time you didn't think so?
ayaan hirsi ali
At the time I didn't think so.
Of course, at the time I completely believed in it.
joe rogan
Why did you know that the witch doctors were just superstitious and that it was nonsense?
At such an early age.
ayaan hirsi ali
I'm in fourth grade.
I had the fortune to actually go to school and be taught such things as science, the science class, biology, cause and effects, the way things happen.
One of the things that ravaged us was malaria.
I got malaria.
Everybody I know got malaria.
Most people had families where people died.
People got sick, really very sick, and then died.
And the witch doctors were supposed to make these people well, and they were at any rate supposed to stop them from dying.
So going to the biology class, when we were told, literally, to look at...
An insect called a mosquito and dissect it and look at its behavior and how it sees still water, lays its eggs, and what happens when that mosquito comes and injects its What do you call it?
That little piece of itself into you, draws your blood and leaves something in you, which is the parasite.
Once you understand that, and this is, I'm in fourth grade, fifth grade.
Once they teach that and they show how it works, you go home and you say, don't give any more money to the witch doctor.
Actually, what we should do is go around to all the little puddles and pools of water around us.
Let's drain those, dry those, keep our windows shut.
We have this big can of pesticide called Doom and I would say let's spray those after we had done all of that and we won't have malaria because that's how it is.
So I found myself even at that age confronting grown-ups who were established who are well respected and who were taking money from my poor mother because they would cure malaria and I come in I mean with the most superficial level of education you can think but objective education to say I actually get what's happening and that I
can't explain to an American audience the confrontation the just the boundaries that you're crossing and and the people you're making angry the toes you're stepping on When you, you know, you breeze into the house and say, and now I know how it works.
joe rogan
So, you, as a young woman, were going to be forced into an arranged marriage.
And this is what made you flee and head to Europe and wind up in Holland, correct?
ayaan hirsi ali
That's correct, yeah.
joe rogan
Can you explain how that was going down?
ayaan hirsi ali
So this is 1992 and by then I'm 22 years old.
So we've been in Kenya from 1980 to, in my case, 1992. My father left us in 1982. And I was about 12 years old.
And all this time he was gone.
He was gone for 10 years.
And he comes back and he says, it's time for you to get married.
joe rogan
You hadn't seen him in 10 years?
ayaan hirsi ali
I hadn't seen him in 10 years.
joe rogan
Had you communicated with him at all?
ayaan hirsi ali
He used to write letters and after a while the letters stopped.
But the point in terms of him taking the duty upon himself, it's his duty.
So the way it works in Somali culture in many parts of the world, that culture is the father's responsible He's your guardian.
He's your male guardian.
He's responsible for who he's going to pass you on to.
That's finding you the right husband.
But because he was gone from 82 to 1992, I was able to get on with age and get stronger and wiser, but also see some of my classmates and my friends who were forced into these arranged marriages.
And my takeaway from looking at their lives was, I don't want my life to unfold that way.
Because it was really a replication of my own mother's life.
And my mother's life was miserable.
Every country we went to, my mom didn't speak the language.
She didn't want to learn the language.
But she felt betrayed.
She felt out of depth.
She was angry.
She was full of resentment.
And she took it all out on us.
So, watching what was happening to these young women, I thought, surely life must offer more than that.
I to this day say I am grateful that my father left us when he did and came back when he did.
Because had he been with us earlier, he might have taken this initiative to force me into marriage at the age of 15, 16, 17. And at that age, I'm not sure I would have accomplished what I did at 22. And when he was gone, I missed him and I was miserable.
I wanted him to come back and be with us.
But then again, everything is about hindsight.
In hindsight, I think, what if he had married me off at 15 or 16 or 17 or 18?
You know, what kind of future would I have had?
joe rogan
The environment that you lived in, you felt like women were second-class citizens and you felt like they were the property of men and they were at the beck and call of men and they weren't allowed to speak up.
They weren't allowed to do many things that men were allowed to do and they had to know their place.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
How frustrating was that?
ayaan hirsi ali
It was hugely frustrating.
Also, I'm not trying to defend where I come from, but Jo, when I listen to you talk like that, what I want to say is I know you've got an American-Western So you're observing them through that prism, through the lens of, oh, these women are oppressed.
They aren't allowed to do anything.
And it's objectively true.
I wholeheartedly agree with you.
And there's so many women in those positions who agree with you.
But being on the inside, being raised within that culture, when you complain about the absolute obedience that you have to show to your father and other male relatives, When you talk,
when you object to the fact that you're not supposed to have a will of your own, or desires of your own, or things you want to do, the put down was always that you are the rebel.
You're sinning.
You're breaking the rules and the laws and the norms and the customs.
So you are wrong.
And there would be conversations between my mother and her relatives on how can we bring her back into the straight path, if you will.
The religious edicts, the tribal and clan edicts.
And that's when things get out of hand.
Because from one day, you are the insider.
They try to mold you into the insider's beliefs and norms.
You fail to do that.
And if you're not careful, you'll be made the outsider.
joe rogan
Were you unique amongst your friends and the people in your family in your beliefs that this was wrong?
ayaan hirsi ali
No, I was not alone.
There were girls and women around me whom I really consider them to be so much smarter, stronger, more informed, in many ways wiser.
Who I would look up to they might be two or three years older than me and I would say well I'm really having a hard time right now with My mother and sticking to the rules.
How do you do it?
How have you done it?
And the answers I would get most often would be you're young You will learn.
There's no way out of here.
So what you need to do is show willpower, show strength, show commitment.
Everybody goes through this.
For some it will be harder than others.
But the thing I was told constantly is it's as hard as you make it.
In other words, the sooner you submit, the sooner all these hardships go away and then you're just one of us and you're doing what you're supposed to do, what you were created to do by God.
You're taking your place.
The more you say, I'm not going to do this.
I'm going to read this novel.
It's not my turn to do the dishes.
It's someone else's turn.
You start fantasizing about where you think you could be.
Then you are stepping on so many toes at that point.
And you know there's nobody who's going to be on your side.
So you can make the pain as long as you want it to be.
joe rogan
What did you know about the rest of the world outside of the community that you lived in?
What did you know about the way women were treated in Europe or in the United States or anywhere else in the world?
ayaan hirsi ali
I knew what I got out of literature, out of reading books.
I knew what I got out of movies, out of music.
I want you to, I don't know how old you are, but the 1980s, I'm in Nairobi and kids my age, I'm in my teens, we're listening to Michael Jackson, we're doing breakdance, we're watching very trashy, what I've now come to call trashy movies.
joe rogan
Like what trashy movies?
ayaan hirsi ali
Gosh, many trashy movies.
There were these movies at some point where the two guys would come at the cars, one from the other side, and then they would miss, what was that game called?
joe rogan
Chicken.
ayaan hirsi ali
Chicken, yeah, the game of chicken.
That's the stuff we used to watch.
joe rogan
We think of trashy differently.
No, it was terrible, for sure, but I don't think we would call it trashy.
I think trashy...
Jamie, you think trashy would be, like, sexual?
Like, what would trashy be?
unidentified
I guess, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Trashy would be, like, I guess, it's a weird phrase.
Trashy's a weird phrase.
Like, you say trashy to people, they know it's not good, but they're like, what does that mean?
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, it's stupid movies.
You go to a lot of trouble to get out of the house and lay down this whole, you know, this friend is going to be on the lookout for you.
This person is going to tell a lie on your behalf.
We're going to tell my mom she went to the mosque.
Everybody's going to stick to that story.
And then you go to the movies And you watch A Fish Called Wanda What did it seem like To you to watch a movie like that though To see this completely different world In these films I mean My sister and I and all the young women, we were sitting in a cinema and we were mesmerized.
Absolutely mesmerized.
We just couldn't believe that these were actual human beings who lived like that.
Again, talking of Trashy, we read John Collins, we read Robert Ludlam, we read all of those spy stuff.
So if you're really in a book into any of these thrillers, you imagine yourself to be the hero of the book.
And then after you've solved one of the most complex mysteries, There are confrontations between the Soviets and the Americans.
You close the book and you look around you and everything says you need to do these dishes before your mom comes here and whacks you on the head.
So there's the reality on the ground which is not what I would call I'm just trying to see how, because I don't want to diminish that, but I also want to explain to an American audience, it's not easy, girls and guys.
And for us, reading that type of literature, going to these movies, listening to Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and doing breakdance, those were the escapes that...
Those were our drugs.
We didn't have boys because boys could get away and go find hide somewhere.
I'm sure they were exposed to some sort of drug.
But as a girl in my teenage years, I don't remember anything that was mind altering except that stuff.
The neighbors, a girlfriend, a best friend, they would have TV and then later on the video, the VHS stuff came along and you could come and watch movies in their house.
And those were the escapes, the escapades.
And as you do that, you're telling your mother, you know what, mom, I'm heading to the mosque.
But you're not heading to the mosque.
You're watching this stuff.
And why do I call it trash, rubbish?
I don't know.
joe rogan
No, they're definitely rubbish.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
But in what way have they helped me?
I don't know.
I've actually forgotten most of the stories.
joe rogan
Was there any that particularly stood out?
I mean, obviously, just the cultural differences were probably very mesmerizing, but were there any of the movies, did they reach out to you and give you hope that there was something better somewhere else?
ayaan hirsi ali
Sometimes, yeah.
There were some really...
If movies were made for teenagers, I'm not sure they gave me that sense, but the...
You know, people in the military dying for something, that could leave you with a sense of, yeah, this stuff is worth fighting for.
Here I'm like 15 or 16 years old.
I'm a teenager in Kenya.
We have death all around us.
We have civil wars all around us.
We have refugees all around us.
So to go to a screen would be to just escape that stuff.
I read Nancy Drew's.
You know, be on a journey with her trying to figure out who the bad guys are.
It was fun.
It was interesting.
It plays on your intelligence because you're trying to help her solve the mystery.
But then you are her.
And so you imagine a world where women can go around solving mysteries.
There's stuff like that.
But we always understood, like I said, as soon as that thing goes off, you go back straight to your reality.
joe rogan
And so your father returns.
You're 22. How long had he returned for before he was trying to force you into an arranged marriage?
ayaan hirsi ali
So he left in 82 and came back in 1992. I would say a decade, 10 years.
unidentified
Right.
ayaan hirsi ali
And when he comes back, his attitude is taking it up from where he left it off.
joe rogan
So immediately.
ayaan hirsi ali
Immediately.
But my mom doesn't respond that way to him.
She responds to him, you left and I don't want you back.
He's a man with a name.
He has a reputation.
He's obviously never been told, at least by a wife, you know, I don't want to see you again.
I don't want to have you around me.
And so the three of us, again, my brother is one year older than me, my sister is a year and a half younger than me.
So as three siblings, we are going, okay, are you with dad or are you with mom?
Or are you in between?
And I'm in between.
I'm also the in between child.
I can see things from mom's position, but you know what?
I love dad.
I want him to come back and pick things up from where he left off.
And my sister's already gone into the hump of, I don't want to speak to him.
He left us.
Who the hell does he think he is?
My brother just disappears.
He goes with his Kenyan friends.
How do I explain Kenyan friends?
We're a Somali minority, we just hang out with other Somalis.
My brother would hang out with Kenyans and my mother had a derogatory name for Kenyans and so she would say he went to quote-unquote, the derogatory name that she had for Kenyans.
So that went on for a while.
And at some point, my mother made it very clear to my father, he just wasn't welcome.
We did the routine things you're supposed to do.
When he woke up early in the morning, he told us it's time to pray.
We got up, we prayed.
I started cooking breakfast.
He ate of that breakfast, but she put him in a teeny tiny closet and he wasn't allowed to come into the bedroom.
So that was all very awkward and weird.
And at that time, there was a civil war in Somalia, so it wasn't just us, the family.
There were lots of people staying in our house who could all feel the vibes of what's going on.
There was a lot of whispering.
And at some point, my father said, I think I'm going to leave.
To which my sister said, oh, what's new?
And he left, he found a place, about like a 30-minute drive with no traffic, maybe an hour and a half with traffic, with his first wife.
He remarried his first wife, who treated him differently.
And so that is the setup.
Day in, day out, you know, we go and visit him.
He comes and visits us sometimes.
And then one day he comes and he says, I've been to the mosque.
And with Allah's blessing, I think I found you the right man.
And it's just like that.
joe rogan
You don't meet this man?
ayaan hirsi ali
He says, you'll meet him.
Exactly.
So like, when am I going to meet this man?
And he says, you will meet him.
I will bring him over.
And he brings him over and I meet him.
And there's the get to know one another piece of the deal where my mother is sitting on the end.
It's a room.
I don't want to call it a sitting room.
I think ideally it was intended to be a sitting room, but at that point there are 10 or 12 refugees sleeping there.
So there are mattresses on the ground and there's a bed and she's sitting on the edge of that bed.
And there are two chairs pulled up, and my father is sitting on one, and the man I'm supposed to be married to is sitting on the other, and we are supposed to start to get to know one another with my parents there.
And I asked him about, and my sister was there too, asked him about what novels he reads and what movies he watches and what games he likes to play.
And all his answers are And please forgive me, I'm 22 at the time.
But in my head, I'm using, yeah, that's, you know, shit.
I'm not going to go with this.
I'm not going anywhere with this man.
joe rogan
He likes terrible movies and bad books.
ayaan hirsi ali
He didn't know of any movies.
We thought, how could you be in Canada all this time and not speak?
Like, we lived in Kenya.
I spoke better English than he did, but he's a Canadian citizen.
And so my sister and I are like, it's really mean.
And what we were doing was not nice, but I'm coming to the conclusion, no, I don't want to marry you.
And my father is...
I've just found you the perfect human being.
And so...
joe rogan
By what metric did you decide this man was a perfect human being?
Because he was religious?
ayaan hirsi ali
He's a member of our extended family.
He had a job.
He was going to materially support me.
And my father never ever had to worry about any kind of mistreatment, physical mistreatment, because he's a member of the extended family.
And the guy said to me, Osman is his name, he said to me, You look wonderful.
You're properly covered up.
I was wearing the headscarf and long sleeves.
Your attire is modest.
And you are going to have six boys for me.
Because I only want to have sons.
joe rogan
Oof.
ayaan hirsi ali
This is 1992. And my brain is going...
joe rogan
I gotta get out of here.
ayaan hirsi ali
I need to get out of here.
joe rogan
So how did you manage to get out?
ayaan hirsi ali
So he's a Canadian citizen with a job and he had to go back.
He came for two things.
He came to look for members of his family who were fleeing out of Somalia.
Again, 1991-1992, beginning of the civil war in Somalia.
People are fleeing and people all over the world, Somalis all over the world, are coming to Kenya and other places to look for their family members.
So that was his main objective.
Second objective was to find a wife, which he then at that moment has.
And he goes back and my father says to him, don't worry about her immigration papers.
I will take care of those.
And my father reaches out to another extended member of our family living in Germany.
And he says, that's...
And Morsal is going to help us with the paperwork.
And a few days later, well, that's February when he leaves.
So it's now in July of 1992. The travel document issued by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is ready.
And it has a visa on it.
And I'm to travel on that travel document that's in my name.
So I can travel from Nairobi, Kenya.
I go to Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and spend a weekend with my father's third wife and my half-sister for a couple of days.
Then I fly from Addis Ababa to Frankfurt to Dusseldorf.
And I'm in Dusseldorf with my relatives.
The uncle whom I was supposed to be with, who's supposed to take care of my papers, sent one of the people who work for him, who's another distant cousin, and he says, I'm here to take care of you.
Of course, I'm thankful.
And he takes me to a family, a Somali family of our clan who live in Bonn.
So I spend one night in Dusseldorf and then go to Bonn.
And in the period that I'm in Bonn with that family, I get to know the 14-year-old son.
It's July, so schools are closed.
And I start to ask him about how I can go to the UK. I speak English.
I grew up from age 10. I was in Kenya.
I can speak English.
I think I can find my way in England.
He looks at my travel document and he says, it doesn't give you access to the UK, but it gives you access to four other countries besides Germany.
And that's the Netherlands, it's Belgium, it's Luxembourg, and I suppose it's France.
unidentified
And you choose.
ayaan hirsi ali
And he starts to talk to me about, we're talking about flights and how do you get there?
And he says, you can take the train.
And I persuade him to help me take the train the next day from Bonn to Amsterdam.
unidentified
Wow.
ayaan hirsi ali
That's July 24, 1992. You know no one in Amsterdam.
joe rogan
You don't speak Dutch.
You take this train, and does he keep his mouth shut, or does he tell anybody that you escaped on the train?
ayaan hirsi ali
I didn't tell him I was escaping.
I said I was going to visit another extended family, a woman who, when she fled Somali, had stayed in our house, who was in the Netherlands.
Her name is Faduma.
I had her telephone number, and I told him, I'm just going to go visit those relatives of ours before I go off to Canada.
And he helps me with the whole process.
joe rogan
So he doesn't know what your plan is?
ayaan hirsi ali
No, he's 14. Oh, okay.
I don't tell him anything.
I just want to know how do you go from here to there.
And the UK plan was frustrated, so now it becomes the Netherlands.
And I call that woman, Fadumo, who's somewhere in the interior of the country in an asylum seeker center because she had asked for asylum.
And when I'm in the train, she says, this is what you do.
Don't come to me fast.
Go to that other cousin of ours who lives in a place called Folendam.
And so when at 11.30pm the train arrives, she had instructed me how to get off the train, cross the street, go to where the buses are, take the bus to Folendam.
And then called this cousin and the cousin sent her husband, who by the way is white.
That cousin of mine married a white man and had been shunned herself by the family.
And so this guy picks me up from Follendam, which is, it felt like an age.
It felt like an eternity to go from Amsterdam to Follendam, but I think it was all of an hour and a half.
And he picks me up and he takes me to her and from there she starts explaining to me how things work.
joe rogan
How so?
unidentified
In what way?
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, if you ask for asylum, so far as I said, I just want to get a job.
I don't want to ask for asylum.
And then she says, you can't.
You have a visa on your passport.
And when that visa expires, you have to get out of the country.
So you have a very short window of time to make up your mind what you want to do.
And she urged me to ask for asylum.
And she said, if you ask for asylum, then you get into the process.
They forget about that document.
And it's all about what's happening to you.
And when I do that, I go to Zvola, the place she said would be the best place for me to ask for asylum.
She says it's the best place because that's where the other woman whom I'm on my way to has.
And that's where for the first time in my life someone comes in uniform, what looks to me like police uniform or military uniform, and I think it's over.
I think he's telling me you're going to get out of the country, you'll be shot, something bad is going to happen to you.
And he comes over and he says, would you like a cup of tea?
Or coffee?
And I can't believe my senses that there is a place in the world where people in uniform ask you if you want tea or coffee.
Because where I came from, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, that's not what the police do.
joe rogan
So, was it a feeling of relief?
Was it a feeling of just complete disbelief?
ayaan hirsi ali
It was disbelief combined with awe.
Is this all for real?
Am I dreaming it?
And the guy actually arrives with the beverage.
I mean, yeah.
And so it's things like that, small things like that, that I try and tell my European friends and my American friends is, you know, when you guys, you just say rule of law, rule of law, it's not like some kind of poem by your grandfather.
It's real.
And the person in uniform who later on I discovered wasn't even a policeman, but he was in uniform.
He was one of the security people at the center.
He directs me to the reception area and he says, talk to these people.
And I do and they say, there's something called a stripping card.
It's like a bus card that they put in your hands and you say, you have to take this bus and it will take you to the next place.
Little haste and they'll take care of your paperwork.
And I do that, and then they send me somewhere else.
And after criss-crossing the country in buses that the Dutch paid for, with the help of people in uniform who guide you from A to B, they grant me asylum.
I become a refugee.
And so I don't need that piece of paper that I came in with, which I had shared.
joe rogan
Are you in any way concerned that someone from your, whether it's your father's side or this man who you're supposed to be married to, that they're gonna come and get you?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
So how do you prevent that?
ayaan hirsi ali
There's no preventing it.
The way I think of it is, when I go to the authorities and say, we're going to put down your name and your date of birth, I say to them, instead of telling them my name is Ayan Hirsi Magan, I tell them my name is Ayan Hirsi Ali.
I keep to my date of birth, November 13, but instead of 69, I tell them 67. So with Ali and 67, I hope not to be found.
Which was naive and stupid.
Because in the end they do find me because the way it works with Somalis is no one is looking for your name or your date of birth.
They're looking for this girl who looks like that, talks like that and so on.
And so it goes through the clan.
It's the clan way of finding things.
Again, very difficult to explain.
joe rogan
I understand.
ayaan hirsi ali
So and so, and so, and so, and so, and so, and so.
And so they say, oh yes, I think I've seen this girl somewhere.
I think she was with Fathomore.
No, then she left Fathomore.
Then she went to Marin.
Oh yeah, I think that's where she is.
So somehow they found me after four months.
joe rogan
Four months.
So during that four months, what had you been doing?
ayaan hirsi ali
I was, after the initial paperwork, I was sent to a place called Luntren in the middle of the country.
And there, I was for 11 months, but they asked you to, you know, They gave me a refugee status which is the best you can have in the world, meaning you're now part of this society.
You can go to language class, you can work, you can do whatever you want.
And that's exactly what I start doing.
I start learning the language, but they don't have any housing for me yet.
It's also a place where the government arranges the housing for you.
So I was on a wasting list for an apartment.
And I was there for four months when this guy arrives through that system of looking.
He comes to my caravan.
We lived in what Americans would call a trailer park.
But we were told to call it caravans.
It's homes with wheels underneath it.
And it's in the middle of the afternoon and I hear this knock.
I open the door and there's the man I was married off to with three other men.
And my system freezes and all I can do is say, come in and they come in and then take them to the little living space where the seating space is and have them sit down.
And then I say, would you like tea or coffee?
And they go, tea.
And I pick up the thermoscan.
Every caravan has one or two thermoscans assigned to them.
And I walk out and I walk all the way back to where the people who work at the asylum seeker center, the social workers.
And I talk to one of the service providers, Sylvia, and I explain to her and I say, I'm busted.
I told you guys I ran away from the civil war in Somalia.
I didn't.
I ran away from a forced marriage and the guy I was married to is in my caravan and he's with three other guys and basically I've come to say goodbye.
And she says, but you don't want to go with him.
I said, no, I don't want to go with him.
That's why I came here.
That's why I was hiding all this time.
And she says, but you don't have to.
And I tell her, but you know, your government is going to figure out I lied in my asylum.
They're going to figure out the whole story.
They'll kick me out anyway.
She says, you don't have to.
And I say, what do you mean?
And she says, I can call the police now.
And if you're 100% sure you don't want to go with him, you don't have to.
You just talk to the policeman and you'll go with the policeman.
And I say to her, yeah, call the policeman.
Call the police.
And when they arrive, they sit me down and they go through it.
Are you sure this is what you want to do?
And I keep nodding.
I am sure this is what I want to do.
And they go back and talk to him.
And he gets very mad.
And...
That's one of the confrontations that I wish was somewhere on the record because he's coming from his culture and his truth and the way he looks at the world and he's telling them, who the hell do you think you are?
You can't interfere in this.
This woman was given to me by her father.
And they don't recognize that.
And there's this confrontation, which Sylvia keeps me out of, and she says, whatever, if you want to go with him, you can.
But if you don't want to, we're not going to make it happen.
And that's another...
I mean, I would give that woman and that policeman anything.
Anything.
joe rogan
Imagine if that woman wasn't there when you went to talk to her.
Imagine if there was no one there.
ayaan hirsi ali
Then I would have gone with him.
Yeah.
joe rogan
So he leaves?
ayaan hirsi ali
He leaves and he says, I'm going to be back with lawyers.
joe rogan
Lawyers?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
And he comes back with lawyers.
And Sylvia explains to me, he won't be able to find a lawyer who is going to help him Take a human being over the age of 18 years with the argument her father gave her to me.
It just doesn't work like that.
joe rogan
But you're still incredulous.
You still think that it's possible that he's going to drag you away.
ayaan hirsi ali
I am incredulous, but she's trying to literally get it into my skull.
It doesn't work like that.
And it did help that I was there for four months, that I had in fact seen things working differently.
So it wasn't, I think if it had happened on the day of my arrival, it would probably have been over.
But having been there all these months and seeing so many things that were so different from what I was used to, I thought that was credible.
joe rogan
Like for example, what kind of things did you see that were so different?
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, all these women who were working.
You have to imagine an asylum seeker center back then was this big compound, like a military compound.
It does have barbed wire around it, but where we were, all the homes are these trailers.
And then at the entrance of the compound, you have a little building where security people in uniform are sitting, and then there are all these little houses.
So the people who take shifts in running the day-to-day of the center, and then there are the people who deal with health care,
there are people who deal with Anything, food, anything that you, you know, putting 300, 400, 500 people in a compound, all the logistics of that, the people who run that stuff are all in little houses there.
And I mean little houses, sort of makeshift.
Two, three room houses where there are offices.
So I've seen it.
I saw that those places were occupied by women who were very often telling the men what to do.
And I would ask, so is this man your boss?
No, he's not my boss.
I'm his boss.
That's what the Dutch women see.
And they explain these hierarchies.
I arrived in 1992 in July.
It's the summer months.
Women are dressed in shorts, tank tops, t-shirts.
joe rogan
Is that crazy to you?
ayaan hirsi ali
It looked otherworldly to me.
And so are the men.
And no one was harassing anyone.
They just seemed to be oblivious to all of this.
And the men would talk to me like a real person.
unidentified
Wow.
ayaan hirsi ali
To me it was wow.
It's not wow anymore.
I know it now.
But back then it was wow.
joe rogan
But it's important for people to listen to this.
To try to understand where you're coming from and why you find a lot of what we discussed earlier so offensive.
Because you've dealt with real suppression.
And to just try to imagine what it was like to be you to see women in shorts, and women telling men what to do, the women who were the boss, women who could do whatever they wanted to.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, they were on bicycles.
They were roller skating.
joe rogan
This is crazy.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
They had their hair out in the open, up, down.
It didn't matter.
They were just...
joe rogan
Did you keep a journal during this time?
ayaan hirsi ali
I wish I did.
I didn't keep a journal, but I had...
joe rogan
It would be like someone visiting another planet.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, and like, I don't know again how old you are, but we used to have...
We were talking about, I'm two years older than you, remember?
Okay.
Yeah, but for us to call home was four guilders and 99 cents.
That's five guilders.
So that's almost the equivalent back then was five dollars to call home for one minute.
So in whatever you said in one minute cost five dollars.
So I would call my sister sometimes and sometimes I'd rant about, oh my god, it's raining, it's raining.
And she's like cursing and saying, I don't care to hear about the rain.
Have you got anything else to say?
And it's like, okay, the women here, they're running around in like, like half naked.
And the men too.
It's different here.
Things are crazy here.
And then your money would run out.
I wish I kept a journal.
joe rogan
Yeah, I wish you did too.
ayaan hirsi ali
But then there were the other Somalis who came from Somalia, and there were people who came from Iraq, they came from Afghanistan, they came from Iran, they came from everywhere.
And we would huddle together in the dining room and say the exact same things.
And as women, men from those parts of the world would actually start harassing us and treating us badly.
And I would constantly go to, we call the tables, because the people say, like, that's the white table.
The white table means white people are sitting around the table.
So I'd go to the white table and tell them, this is how the men are treating us.
And your men are treating you differently.
Like, can you talk to them differently?
joe rogan
Wow.
ayaan hirsi ali
And there were things like that.
And they would say, but why do they do that?
Where do you guys come from?
Is that normal?
And in that, I don't know what you would call it.
You could even call it like a human lab because you've thrown these people from all over the world at one another in a small place.
And there are expectations and our expectations are not being met.
There are things that surprise us.
There are things that we go, oh...
I didn't think that things were done that way.
It's all there.
I don't want to say it was a good memory in the sense that it was pleasant, but in terms of teaching moments, best teaching moments in my life.
joe rogan
Because it's a complete paradigm shift.
ayaan hirsi ali
Complete paradigm shift.
There was a man from Iran who kept looking at my skin and staring at it.
And he would scare someone else's skin and he'd say, does it really get that dark?
And you think, but you're from Iran.
People in Iran at that point, what this man was telling me, some of them were shut out of everything.
That they had no idea that they were actually black people alive.
This is in 1993. 1992, 1993. So there were people arriving.
I met people from...
joe rogan
Never experienced.
ayaan hirsi ali
Never experienced.
I walk out of, you know, where you have to go turn your laundry in and get the fresh laundry.
And I would meet someone.
Where do you come from?
And she says, Azerbaijan.
And I think, hmm, is that a place?
That's how we were.
We didn't know.
I knew reality where I came from.
I knew a little bit about Europe.
I knew a little bit about America.
But there were so many places that we didn't know anything about.
Some of my, you know, the camp mates, they came from So I knew there was a country called Yugoslavia.
But when you meet these people, they never said they came from Yugoslavia.
They said, I'm from Croatia or Bosnia or Serbia.
And you say, are those countries?
They weren't at that time.
They weren't countries.
But that's how these people saw.
That's how they identified.
You shouldn't mistake a Serb for a Bosnian or the other way around, or you'll be in big trouble.
unidentified
Wow.
ayaan hirsi ali
So it's stuff like that.
And I was there for 11 months, and I wish I was an anthropologist.
I wish I had a book with me.
I wish we were just recording the whole deal.
There were Somalis who were just having, right in the middle of civil war, slashing each other's throats, put in the same asylum seeker center, in the same compound.
And the Dutch people who were in charge of the center, they would come out and they said, another fight broke out.
What are they fighting about?
And we would just go like, oh my gosh, don't you know?
How would they know?
joe rogan
Especially before the internet.
How would they know?
ayaan hirsi ali
How would they know?
It was before the internet.
This is a country that's trying to be generous and welcoming.
They want everybody to be well-fed and get rid of their traumas and leave their traumas behind them.
But if you find yourself in these caravans or trailer park cars, they're very small.
They're probably, I would say, the interior of this studio.
Maybe some of them even a little smaller, but divided into a sitting area, bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, and into three bedrooms.
And if you meet your archenemy right there, you're placed in the same caravan, how do you respond?
So that's some of the things that were going on were crazy.
joe rogan
And what universal language?
Was it English you were speaking with the people from Croatia and Bosnia?
ayaan hirsi ali
English.
Almost everyone spoke English, attempted at speaking English.
And I did a lot of translation, translating from Somali to English, English to Somali.
I volunteered to do that.
Again, a huge source of education for me.
Because then I learned how those people that we just call white, how they were thinking, what was going through.
They say, you've got to fill this form again, you've got to fill that form again, you've got to fill another form.
And so the Somalis were saying, there must be a conspiracy.
Why do they want all these forms filled out?
Because where we come from, when a government asks you to give personal information to the government, that means you're going to disappear.
You'll be disappeared, or you're betraying a family member.
So when they ask for information, we're all going, ouch.
And so you have to get over that.
They have to come in and explain, nope, it's only for your health.
We're the only ones who are seeing.
No one else, no part of the government will see us.
And very often people are struggling to just take them at their word.
joe rogan
So when this husband person, this person who's supposed to be your husband, when he comes back with lawyers, how does that confrontation go down?
What kind of lawyers does he bring?
Lawyers from Holland?
Where are the lawyers from?
ayaan hirsi ali
He threatened to go and get lawyers.
And here I'm guessing because he didn't tell me.
And my guess is he probably went to get lawyers and the lawyer said, what's the case?
joe rogan
So he tried to get lawyers in Holland?
ayaan hirsi ali
In Holland.
Yeah.
And my guess is, and now I'm confident that my guess is right, that there is no lawyer probably who would take that case.
It's not like America.
You don't litigate for the sake of litigating.
If you lose a case, you pay for the entire litigation, all the costs that the litigation costs.
And so a lawyer would say there must be some kind of law that I can use to defend you.
And if you don't have a case, you don't have a case.
But if you take this to court, then you're wasting everyone's time and you are going to pay for that.
And so I'm sure he backed away.
But what he then did was come back with more relatives that he and I both share.
joe rogan
How many times did he come back?
ayaan hirsi ali
So he came back the second time.
And the second time there was this big, in one of the caravans, this big gathering.
And he said he came back with the king of our clan.
It's a descendant of someone who was a king.
And that he is going to be the mediator because that's what my father advises.
And so I had to go and sit in that caravan with all of these members of my clan.
Elderly, wise, just the people whom you have at hand, who are the highest levels of the clan power hierarchy.
joe rogan
And how many months had you been in the country when this happened?
unidentified
Four.
joe rogan
Still four, so he came back relatively quickly.
ayaan hirsi ali
He came quickly, a week or two later, maybe even within the week.
He came back very quickly.
joe rogan
Had you developed any confidence that you were going to be able to stay by then?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, this woman I'm telling about, Sylvia, she had the police ready and I wasn't going to do anything.
I wasn't going to go into the den.
I wasn't going to go into that space without having the backing of the police.
joe rogan
So were the police in the caravan as well or were they outside waiting?
ayaan hirsi ali
They were not in the caravan, but she said, you are out there and nobody's going to come.
They know.
First of all, we're on a compound.
The compound has barbed wire around it.
There is security.
And then there is the police waiting for whatever is going to unfold.
joe rogan
So they can't drag you out of there?
ayaan hirsi ali
They can drag me out.
It could cause me physical harm, but they didn't, thank God.
And he said he wasn't like that.
And I knew that he wasn't like that.
He just wanted to have the last word on honor.
And he really wanted to be seen as...
I'm this honorable guy.
I've done everything I can.
And look, I'm the one who's been lied to and cheated and mistreated and all of that.
They all came around and each one of them gave me the longest lecture you can possibly think of, you know, telling me story after story of how this could end.
Now you're in arms of your family and you're about to walk out that door and you're saying, I don't want to have anything to do with the family.
You're all on your own.
This could end really badly for you.
So I would get that and every single person participating in that gathering would tell me a story, each one more horrifying than the previous one.
And all I had to do was just sit and be quiet.
Just don't say a word, just sit right through it.
joe rogan
When they were talking about horrible stories, like what kind of horrible stories?
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, horrible stories is you're sitting and it's like, okay, here we are today.
Your father has found this amazing man for you.
So there'd be a lot of flattery to him, a lot of flattery to my father, and then a fantasy of what this union could be and could become like.
And now it's not.
Because of you.
You, Ayaan.
It's up to you.
And you walk out that door, and the consequences are, and they would, like, sort of spell it out.
There'll be no one for you.
You could end up being a prostitute.
You will be sold into slavery.
There's no one who cares about you.
You make your choice.
You walk out that door.
All that bad stuff happens to you.
You stay here.
You go to your husband.
You say, forgive me.
He forgives you.
And you're within the family fold.
And then the next person would do that.
And the next one are 12 of them.
And I just listen to that.
Again, it follows that same procedure.
Flattery to him, flattery to my father.
Look what you're throwing away.
Have you lost your mind?
So after all that emotional blackmail, rational, you're not going to be one of us.
You will not be a mugger anymore.
Blah, blah, blah.
All of it.
At the end of it, I'm just sitting, just quietly.
That's what you're supposed to do.
I was raised to do that.
Don't speak back.
Don't talk back.
Don't interrupt.
Just shut up.
Be quiet and listen.
And then it goes to the judge.
So the guy that he, the guy who was married to, the guy he picked as the ultimate judge is sitting in the room.
And he's the one who's going to make the call after I've made my case.
And there's no one on my case.
joe rogan
Did you make a case personally for yourself?
ayaan hirsi ali
I just said I don't want to be with him.
I've made up my mind.
joe rogan
And what does the judge say?
ayaan hirsi ali
He asked me again and again, and I said, I made up my mind.
And in the meekest voice, most apologetic voice, and then he called it off and he said, we are going to take this up with your father.
And I was allowed to leave, and that's the last I saw of them.
joe rogan
Did you keep worrying that they were going to return?
ayaan hirsi ali
No.
joe rogan
You thought that was it?
ayaan hirsi ali
No.
I think the one thing I worried about was, well, now I've put myself out there.
Everything they said about me being alone and kicked out, that was true.
There's no way back after that.
I didn't give myself a way of knocking on the door and saying, can you take me back to my father or my mother after taking them through something like that.
joe rogan
So, is this a fearful moment for you?
Do you have anticipation about the future?
Do you feel positive about it?
Like, how did you feel?
ayaan hirsi ali
I feel like I had to walk my ass off to learn Dutch language.
Yeah, and get a job that had nothing to do with the things that they were frightening me about.
joe rogan
Right, yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, being sold into this and sold into that and, you know, get on with it.
And in two and a half years from that moment, so 1994, I was enrolled into a vocation school.
1995, September, I was enrolled into the University of Leiden.
And that's, it was, I was literally terrified into it.
joe rogan
Terrified into learning Dutch and joining a university.
ayaan hirsi ali
And going to university and making some...
You said...
I said I was going to make something of myself.
Well, then you better do it.
And the alternatives, you know, the cleaning jobs, the translation jobs, the stacking of...
unidentified
I worked in...
ayaan hirsi ali
I don't know if we still have those.
I think maybe now machines do that sort of thing.
But the packing industry, where all these items come at you in a factory and you just put them in a box very quickly, as fast as you can.
And they pay you a minimum wage.
And obviously I didn't like that.
And so if you combine all of that, I thought, I have actually no choice but to get on with it.
joe rogan
So, how quickly did you learn the language?
ayaan hirsi ali
In August of 1992, I didn't speak any Dutch.
Zero.
And in April, May, June, July of 1994, I was translating in Dutch.
unidentified
Wow.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
So, if you want it, you can do it.
joe rogan
If you're worried about being sold away to slavery and prostitution.
ayaan hirsi ali
Wow.
joe rogan
That's incredible.
ayaan hirsi ali
And I was embraced.
It's an incredible story.
I just want to caution people.
It wasn't just me doing this for me.
There were also the friends I made, like Sylvia, the woman I told you about.
All of those people who then were a witness to this story who were cheering for me and helping and I went out of a network and I went straight into a different network and those people really embraced me and I'm really grateful to them.
joe rogan
And so you enrolled in this university.
What did you study?
ayaan hirsi ali
I studied political science.
My professor used to say never call political science political science because it's not a science.
So it's the school of government.
It's politics.
joe rogan
So politics in Holland?
In Holland.
It's much different than politics in America, right?
ayaan hirsi ali
The theory part, so what you learn in university is different because it's well-organized and well-ordered and it always has a happy ending.
But when you get into politics, the day-to-day stuff, that's a different story altogether.
And political science helped me understand, oh yeah, so we have these different institutions, you know, House of Commons, let me just put it that way because it's the English-speaking word, but the lower house, the upper house.
And you have the electorate, you have all the different institutions, you have the different layers of, you know, from the city to the province to, we didn't have a federal, but the nation.
You understand that stuff, where it came from.
The history appreciated all of that.
But when you're practicing politics day to day, it's completely different.
joe rogan
Did you consider staying in Holland?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
What made you leave?
ayaan hirsi ali
The...
So there's one gap we left out when we were talking about my life story, which was what happened after 9-11-2001, when I started to engage in the debate on what is it that caused it, and then that's how I end up in politics.
And I get sworn in in 2003 with, and I'm heavily guided by bodyguards who are heavily armed.
And from the second half of maybe 2003, they're moving me from place to place.
joe rogan
You get sworn in to what?
ayaan hirsi ali
Parliament.
joe rogan
Parliament.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, it's what we call Congress in America, the lower house.
So by the time that happens, I'm already surrounded by people carrying weapons.
They're guards.
They're from the government and they're protecting me.
And this goes on for a while, but I get to a place where the threat is considered to be so intense that I had to be moved from address to address, from address to address.
joe rogan
Is this because of your analysis of what happened September 11, 2001?
What is the threat coming from?
ayaan hirsi ali
It's the analysis of what happened where I said, yes, those men acted because of their convictions, not because of any particular policy.
I had unfortunately made it public that I wasn't a Muslim anymore.
And the think tank that I was working for, they had put me on integration.
I had said, if we want the integration to speed up, we have to emancipate Muslim women.
And the three things taken together, my family was already hostile to me.
Then you had the wider community and now Muslims of all nationalities and ethnicities and colors.
I pissed off everyone, pretty much.
joe rogan
So this is 2003, which is crazy.
You're talking about 10 years after you arrived in Holland, roughly.
unidentified
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
It started in 2002. In 2002, I had to leave the Netherlands to come and hide in Santa Monica.
And that was in October.
And when I went back in November, that's when I accepted The idea of getting into parliament and started contending for parliament.
Got into parliament, I still have all these men around me and the security parameters which I'm never allowed to talk about.
Anybody who's been in it will never talk about it because you just don't.
But it's stifling.
And it was then that I had decided I'm going to do one term, and if the cabinet were to sit through its term, it would be four years.
So it would begin in 2004 and end in 2007. But instead, the cabinet fell again because of me in 2006, and I left and I went to Washington, D.C. It fell because of you?
joe rogan
What do you mean?
ayaan hirsi ali
It fell because of me because the Minister for Immigration and Integration decided to take away my citizenship.
If you're not a citizen, you can't be a member of parliament.
joe rogan
Why did they do that?
ayaan hirsi ali
She did that because she said, when you first asked for asylum, you lied about your name and your date of birth.
And that was true.
But I had told the seniors of my party that I had lied about that way back in 2002. So it was a well-known, open information.
It wasn't a secret.
But there was a left-wing documentary company that said they were going to make a profile of me.
And they took, literally, I'm not kidding, they took a book full of essays and interviews that I had given and based on that, they decided to trace my life back to Kenya and then brought the information that was in the book published by the Dutch publisher.
Where I say, my name is actually not Ayaan Hirsi Ali, it's Hirsi Magan.
I wasn't born in 67, I was born in 69. And they make this big news item.
And the context was that particular Minister of Immigration and Integration was playing the I am tough card.
If you lie about your asylum, if you lie about your personality, we're going to take you out.
And people were already saying, even before she did it, well, Ayaan lied about her life while she's still in parliament.
So she came round and said, well, take away her citizenship.
And that was ridiculous, or at least the rest of the party, the rest of politics thought that was ridiculous.
So they started to demand, after she took away my citizenship, that she resign.
And she refused to resign.
And the small coalition party, D66, said, as long as she's in the cabinet, we're not going to be in the coalition.
So either she's out or we are out.
And she said, I'm not going out.
And they went out and the cabinet collapsed.
And then I came here.
joe rogan
Wow.
So when you came to America, were there still threats on your life?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
Those threats are not going away.
joe rogan
Is this a regular thing for you on a daily basis?
ayaan hirsi ali
I don't let it interfere with my daily life anymore.
It's been too long.
But it's just, you know, being on the most wanted of the Al-Qaeda list, things like that.
I'm aware of it, and so I do live with security.
There are people around me who have guns and who protect me, but I don't, on a personal level, I don't let that get under my skin.
It doesn't bother me the way it used to bother me.
joe rogan
And all this is just from leaving the religion and saying that you're an atheist now?
ayaan hirsi ali
And saying that 9-11 perpetrators were driven by religion and all the other perpetrators since then who invoked Islam.
Look, if you go out there and you kill someone And you leave the reason why you do it for all of us to see who are we to say, well, you got all confused.
You actually meant something else.
Maybe it's your income status or you feel disenfranchised.
This is what we've been doing for radical Islamist terror attacks.
A lot of people are saying, That's what they say.
This guy who's shouting Allahu Akbar, this guy who's saying I'm doing it because of my religion, he's totally confused.
That's not why he's doing it.
He's doing it because people are poor.
It just doesn't make sense.
joe rogan
Why do you think that is?
Particularly in the United States, why do you think there's a reluctance to accept that there is an ideological aspect for a lot of these actions?
That they're being driven by what they believe is the will of their religion.
ayaan hirsi ali
The reluctance, I am told, has to do with We don't want the general American public becoming hostile to Muslims, immigrants, foreigners.
I'm told we don't want the general American public stigmatizing people who are innocent.
They happen to be Muslim, but they have no intentions of We're perpetrating terrorist attacks and we don't want those people to get hurt.
So we don't want to say that this person was driven by what he says he is driven by.
I get arguments like that.
I've also, obviously, having been a politician, also had reasons of, well, if you say to them, yes, this individual is driven by Islam, Then he gets to own what Islam is.
And Islam is a contested concept.
And because it's so contested, we Americans and Westerners, we should give it to the peace-loving good Muslims.
They should own that concept.
The radicals, the terrorists, they should not own.
We should declare and say they are unbelievers.
You can take that reasoning up to a point, but in this case, I'm still of the opinion that you can't do that because Islam is a set of, it's a thesis, it's a set of beliefs,
it has an internal logic to it, and If you say it just means what I want it to mean and it's a good thing and I'm only going to give it to the good Muslims, you're approaching it as a thing.
And it's not.
It's an idea.
It's an ideology.
And what the people we think of as bad are saying is, I'm really living up to the requirements of my religion.
If you don't understand that logic, you will never be able to fight Islamist terrorism, political Islam.
You won't be able to fight it because then you don't understand it.
You can't fight an ideology by pretending it doesn't exist or it's a good thing.
joe rogan
What do you say to the people that talk about all of the Muslims that have no desire to commit terrorist acts, live their life peacefully, and just abide by the tenets of the religion, and they believe that Islam is a religion of peace?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
I see that.
I agree with them.
That's the case.
I would say most people who identify as Muslim just want to lead peaceful lives, go about their own business, and they don't want to harm anyone.
That's absolutely true.
And so, not this book, but the previous book, Heretic, My analysis is there is one Islam but there are three sets of Muslims.
There's one Islam, and that's the Islam that's in the Quran, the Islam that was founded by the Prophet Muhammad.
But then the Prophet Muhammad had two careers, one in Mecca and one in Medina.
When he first established the religion in Mecca, he went around the city asking people to give up their gods and come to his one God.
And he did it by asking.
He did it by persuading, talking to people, and preaching charity and goodness.
And then 10 years later, he moves to Medina and he establishes a militia.
And then things change.
He starts to give people a choice.
You either come to my one God and you give up your gods or you die by the sword.
And anytime from Medina, the religion becomes incredibly successful and he goes beyond Arabia into the rest of the world.
And so if you're a Muslim in the 21st century and there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, if you're a Muslim and you say, I'm a peace-loving Muslim, I don't want to impose my religion on anyone else, you're invoking Muhammad in Medina.
If you say, well, I think jihad means that we must take our religion seriously and convert other people, and if they refuse to convert, then we'll use violence, then you're invoking Mohammed in Medina.
joe rogan
You said Medina twice.
You said Medina the first time as well.
ayaan hirsi ali
Okay, I'm sorry.
joe rogan
The peaceful Muhammad is not Medina.
ayaan hirsi ali
The peaceful Muhammad is Mecca.
So Mecca is where he first came out.
And so if he says, if a Muslim today says, unto you your religion, unto me mine, I'm tolerant, all of that, you are invoking Mecca.
If you're invoking jihad, you know, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and some who are sometimes violent, but not all the time, the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations and movements, they're invoking Mohammed in Medina.
Because in Medina, Mohammed made it very clear, you spread the religion by word of mouth, by example, But also by the sword, by violence.
That's Medina Islam.
So I think it would be more accurate to say there's just one Islam at this point that's unreformed, and there's a third group that I describe in Heretic, which is the people like Majid Nawaz who are actually trying to bring about a different Islam.
To shed Medina, bring some stuff out of Mecca, adapt it to our times.
They want to modify stuff.
They want to reform.
So there is that group too, who are actively trying to change things for the better, but they're a minority.
I think the majority are Mecca Muslims, the people who are just Muslim.
They go about their daily business.
They don't want to harm anyone.
But then they have to deal with these...
Jihadists who challenge them and who say to them you can't possibly be a true Muslim if you only adhere to Mecca because the Prophet said what happened in Medina abrogates or voids what happened in Mecca.
joe rogan
What is stopping particularly people from the left, including intellectuals, from recognizing the differences, that there are differences in people that follow the peaceful version of the religion and then people that follow the more radical version of the religion that wants to convert people?
Like, what is stopping them from recognizing that this is an issue?
Because it's almost like an agreed upon reluctance to discuss it, to acknowledge it, and to automatically classify any discussion of it as Islamophobic.
And I've seen this labeled, this label put on you.
That you are Islamophobic.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
So the term Islamophobia is obviously very much a Western term.
It's an opportunity, opportunistic term.
The West has gone woke and they feel An intense regret for some of the things that were done by their ancestors.
And so you have names like homophobia, sexism, and so on.
And Islamophobia is, I would say, a term that is put right in there to exploit that situation.
The way I see it, it's an artificial term.
But let's set that aside and let's see why it is that Western leaders go along with the assertion that Islam is a religion of peace.
There's nothing to see here.
It's just a small group of people who have lost their way and they would have been violent anyway.
But in general, Islam is a religion of peace.
Number one, a lot of leaders Contemporary Western leaders, they don't know much about religion, even their own, and they don't want to.
I mean, you could find out.
You could be ignorant of something, pick up a few books and just find out.
I think, number two, there is a sense that because the West is really powerful where it matters, economically powerful, more powerful than any Islamic country, militarily more powerful, diplomatically more powerful, There is almost that parent-child relationship where we'll just let them come along.
They'll grow up.
They'll come to our way of seeing things.
If they want to believe that Islam is a religion of peace, let's say it's along.
Let's do it along with them.
With some people, I think that is the case.
And then along came ISIS. And they saw that you couldn't do that.
And you are now dealing with people who truly believe.
And I think it was a matter of time before people in Washington and Berlin and London and so on thought, wait a second.
It's not only that they believe it.
It is in the Quran.
It's in the Hadith.
It's in the history of Islam.
We better do something about that.
That's when you start to see a shift in how The confrontation or the clash of values is approached.
The latest example, if you will let me, is the president of France.
In France, for the last 20, 30, 40 years, they were saying, there's nothing to see here.
Islam has evolved.
It's just like Christianity.
It's either a religion of peace or it's irrelevant altogether.
All religions are going to go away.
We're now living in the post-religion age.
In 2021, there is a law right now that has gone through the law house of France and it is being debated in the Senate where they're talking about if that law gets passed, then Muslims who are accused of trying to separate their communities from the rest of France along religious lines are going to be stopped by that law.
There'll be no more homeschooling.
They will be told the values of the Republic prevail.
Anywhere that there's a clash between Islamic values and values of the Republic, the values of the Republic prevail.
And he is saying if that law passes, that's all going to be enforced.
Think about that.
joe rogan
How would they possibly enforce that?
ayaan hirsi ali
Look, I'm just as curious as you are.
joe rogan
They've also banned hijabs on the beach too, right?
Haven't they done that?
ayaan hirsi ali
I get a mixed story about is it the hijab or the burqa?
So there are attires where you can take a scarf and cover your head.
I guess that's not banned anywhere.
There's no debate about that.
But there's something about the thing that covers your face.
And there's been a lot of debate in Europe about that.
And some of the participants of that debate are saying, we're not talking about religion here.
It's all about security.
We need to see everybody's face.
joe rogan
Well, now everyone wears a mask.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's all out the window because of COVID. Because of COVID. And there are other things that are out of the window because of COVID. Because you just asked me, how are they going to enforce those rules of stopping Muslims from separating themselves from the rest of society through their associations, through their schools, through everything that they do that make them say, we don't want to have anything to do with France, even though physically they're in France.
joe rogan
Right.
ayaan hirsi ali
I think they're going to use some of the measures that they applied or some of the laws that they applied during COVID. They're going to assume powers that all of us thought a liberal society would be very careful with, and now they're not.
So I guess that's what they're going to apply.
They'll be breaking into people's homes, mosques, associations, whatever, looking for Wow.
joe rogan
That seems very dangerous to me.
ayaan hirsi ali
And COVID made it possible.
Because with COVID, there was a sense, there's this big bad thing from the outside, this virus that's coming to get all of us.
We didn't know a lot about the virus, but the more we find out, the more we adapt, the more you would think that some of these intrusions into our privacy, into our liberty, that would...
You know, it would stop and we would be able to be free.
And in some countries and even in some states here, people are still insisting that the government has those powers.
The government still has control over...
My husband is from the UK and I just asked, you know...
Who has been to see your mother?
We call her Granny.
Who has been to see Granny?
Well, daughter and boyfriend, but they were sitting outside.
Why can't they sit inside?
And he says, the rules haven't changed yet.
But there's something in me that asks myself, who's enforcing those rules?
joe rogan
Yeah.
And why, in the age of testing, are those rules applicable?
Why, when you can find out if someone's negative for the virus, why can you keep them from them?
ayaan hirsi ali
So why initially, I think we were all in agreement, it was to curtail the virus, but why the rules are still in place when the threat is gone?
That's a very good question.
joe rogan
Well, why wouldn't we understand what the virus is now?
The rules were put in place when we thought it was the Black Plague.
I mean, we thought it was going to be like the Spanish flu.
And kill a vast majority, or a large percentage, rather, of the population.
It's not the same thing.
It's still terrible for the people that get it and die, and the people that have poor health, and the people that have underlying conditions and comorbidities.
But it's not what we thought it was going to be.
But we're still treating it like we treated it a year ago.
We're looking at it the same way we looked at it in March of last year.
ayaan hirsi ali
I think what bothers me, you're absolutely right, but what bothers me now is that it's not even possible to have a debate about that.
So anytime people say you should be suspicious of government, don't give government any powers because once they have that power, they won't give it back.
I think those people are being vindicated in the sense that, and I would say in the past, no, of course not.
If there's no need for government to have that power, they'll give it back.
But now the government wants to just skip the power, even though the threat is gone.
joe rogan
It's just human nature.
You know, there's a tremendous drop in cases in Los Angeles, and yet you still can't go to the gym.
You have to eat outside.
And they just opened up eating outside two weeks ago.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, we never understood that.
Because it doesn't spread outside.
joe rogan
Well, it doesn't make sense.
For a fact, I know that they did it for optics.
Because I know someone who works with the government, who literally had this conversation.
With someone saying, why are we doing this when there's no evidence whatsoever that it spreads outside?
And they said it's for optics.
So they're closing businesses down and they're denying people living for optics.
But what they're doing is they're using power.
They have power.
And these are just individuals or human beings and they're subject to human nature.
It's human nature to exercise power.
You see that with bosses over employees.
You see that in the Stanford prison experiments.
You see it's just things that people do.
You give people power over people and they use it.
ayaan hirsi ali
But in this case, when you say optics, what will they use that power for then?
Because they will be voted out of power if they carry on like this.
joe rogan
I don't know if they will.
I don't know if they will because there's so many people that are so...
their cursory understanding of human nature and their lack of real inquisition, the lack of real questioning of the government's motives, and also this terrible fear of the virus.
The terrible fear of what it actually is.
If you go to Los Angeles today, when I talk to my friends, they have a totally different idea of what the virus is than if you're here in Texas.
It's one of the things that I noticed immediately once I came here.
It's one of the reasons why I moved here.
People treat it like it's a bad cold, which is what it is.
It kills people, but so does the flu.
But we never close down schools for the flu.
The flu actually kills kids.
This kills very few children.
A tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage.
My kids both got it.
And it was nothing.
It was like a headache.
It was gone in a day.
This is what we're seeing with...
With human nature, when people have the ability to tell people you can't work, that's very dangerous.
Or to tell someone your business is not essential, but target is.
Well, maybe you have a small store that sells goods.
Well, you can't open.
But this big store, this big chain, why?
But they're part of special interest groups.
They contribute to the politicians.
There's unions that are involved.
Like that woman that we were talking about before the show who had a restaurant in Los Angeles and she had outside dining that she paid thousands of dollars that she...
Probably didn't even have to set this up so she can keep her business afloat.
And then they told her you have to close down outdoor dining.
And across the parking lot, the television and movie studios were allowed to have outdoor dining.
Like literally she could walk 10 steps and she could be in their outdoor dining and her business was being forced to shut down.
It doesn't make any sense.
Because it doesn't have to.
Because it's optics.
They're just giving the optics that they're doing something.
The cases rise because...
Here's the thing about lockdowns that have been pretty clearly established.
First of all, they don't work.
They don't really curtail the virus.
But what they do do is they force people inside.
When you force people inside and you force people to congregate, it spreads easier.
And that's part of the problem.
ayaan hirsi ali
It spreads easier inside than it does outside.
joe rogan
There's no real evidence that it does spread outside.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it does spread inside, and so you force people inside, you tell people they can't work, and they're all congregated together.
ayaan hirsi ali
Inside.
joe rogan
Yes, inside.
And they're more fearful, they're not getting vitamin D, they're not getting sun, they're not getting exercise.
ayaan hirsi ali
You have more domestic violence.
joe rogan
Yes.
And more mental health issues, more suicide, and all that stuff's through the roof.
And more drug addictions, and more drug overdoses.
And all those...
Problems that don't get calculated in the risk assessment when you're talking about the risk of the virus.
There's a lot of other risks.
There's a lot of other problems.
And the government doesn't give a shit about that.
They keep getting paid no matter what.
When they close down these businesses, I think the government, I think the state, I think the governor and I think the mayor, they should be paid proportionately with the amount of money that's generated by the businesses, particularly the businesses that are forced to close.
See how fucking quick everything opens up?
It would open up like that.
See how quick everything opens up if you give people the freedom to go places.
You don't have to go to these restaurants if you're worried about catching COVID. You don't have to go to the gym if you're worried about catching it.
You can stay home.
You can social distance.
You can wear masks.
You can exercise in the park, out in nature, but you can't because the park's shut because they're worried about COVID. These are some of the rules that people have had to deal with over this past year.
Nonsensical rules like you can't go to the park.
You can't go to the beach.
It's nonsense.
And everybody knows it's nonsense and it's not science-based.
When they say, follow the science, well, you're not following the science.
Because if you did follow the science, you'd let people do anything they wanted outside.
Because the science clearly shows it doesn't spread outside.
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, if you follow the science, you would say, let us have a debate.
And you would have an open debate where you let both sides speak out.
joe rogan
Yes.
ayaan hirsi ali
What we are now seeing, and it is absolutely horrifying, is that you let one side, the side that's speaking for lockdown...
Invoke science and say the science says lockdown.
But there are other scientists who are saying, no, not so fast, and those ones are not allowed to speak.
I have a colleague, Scott Atlas, at the Hoover Institution, and he's made a few points about why some of the things that we're being told to do are not actually supported by science.
People like him can't get their voices out because they're demonized.
Demonized, shut out, kicked out of the whole debate.
And I think we can't go on like this.
joe rogan
No, no, we can't.
And it's forcing a massive divide in our country.
And it's terrifying.
To get back to what's happening in Europe, how popular is this idea in France?
And do you think that that's actually going to pass?
ayaan hirsi ali
The Islamic separatist thing?
I think it is popular with the population, with the voters.
And the reason why I say that is they had a general election about four years ago and Front National, that's the populist far-right party led by Marie Le Pen, came in second.
And next year they have elections and the polls are suggesting That she is going to be either second in some polls, perhaps even first.
So President Macron is being forced to do something about this issue.
And that answers your question, you know, how serious are people about it?
The voters are serious about it.
And it's the kind of issue that seems never to go away.
If it was number one during the last election, and it's still number one this election, then voters want something done.
And if they look at Macron and say, you promised, we gave you that chance last time, and you did nothing, they'll probably go with Marie Le Pen.
So I think right now he needs something concrete, something solid to get through both houses and say, look, I'm not just talking about stopping the radicalization or Islamist separatism, as he calls it.
I am passing a law that stops money coming from outside countries or regulates it, that I am going to stop the so-called homeschooling where young people are taken out of the normal schools and indoctrinated and radicalized at home.
I'm going to establish some form of control over what these preachers, the ones that are Would you explain to people who don't understand what's happening in France?
joe rogan
What the issue is?
ayaan hirsi ali
If you go to France today and you start talking about Islam and Muslim minorities, and you just listen to the people, don't go in with your own opinions, just listen to them.
A lot of them will start talking about civil war.
Every few months, I think it was in October or probably October when a school teacher was beheaded because he was showing cartoons.
And this was done by a Muslim man but then there was a whole circle of people around him.
And back then they were thinking, okay, the civil war is on.
And the terrorist attack before that, a lot of French people would say, we think the civil war has begun.
Maybe the civil war was going on for a long time.
Civil war between who?
They say between the Muslim minorities, not all of them.
But that small minority that is committing terrorist attacks and pushing members of their group to commit terrorist attacks and the rest of France.
And why is that?
Why is it that it seems as if France doesn't have this problem under control?
Well, France has a relationship with Algeria.
Algeria used to be a former colony, so there are lots of people who came from Algeria and settled in France.
But aside from Algeria, also from other parts of North Africa and other French-speaking African countries.
But what France has done is also allowed radical Islamists to come into France and set up Dawah agencies, that is proselytizing agencies, places from which they can proselytize, propagate, indoctrinate people.
So there's a huge swath of French Muslim peoples who physically live in France but live and abide by Sharia law.
And they've become violent and they've become virulent.
And the population is faced with terrorist attack after terrorist attack.
Attempts at terrorism that are foiled.
Women who can't walk on the streets because so many of these streets and neighbors have been claimed for the men.
So I'm not saying only Muslim women.
I'm talking about any kind of women who will be able to walk on those streets.
And so because things have evolved to a place where there is right now a confrontation between these two value systems and the civilizations they represent, it's either France wins or there is a civil war.
So this is kind of their last chance.
joe rogan
So the issue is that these people that have immigrated into France are turning France into where they came from.
They're turning it into where they fled.
ayaan hirsi ali
Pretty much.
Again, I insist, not all of them.
There are a lot of people from Algeria and other parts of North Africa who have embraced French values and have become completely French.
But those are not the ones we're talking about.
The ones...
The subject of this conversation deals only with those who refuse, who know of French values, who live in France, but have refused to abide by French laws, customs and norms.
joe rogan
And this is happening in other places in Europe as well, right?
ayaan hirsi ali
This is happening in Germany.
It's happening in Holland.
It's happening in parts of Scandinavia.
It's happening in the United Kingdom.
Yes.
Every country that has taken in a considerable number of Muslims is facing similar problems.
joe rogan
Refugees.
ayaan hirsi ali
Some of them are refugees.
Some of them came as guest workers.
Some of them came as economic migrants.
It's a mix.
joe rogan
And Germany, apparently what I've read, has a particular problem in shifting their perceptions because, obviously, of their history, of the Nazis and Nazi Germany, and they resist any inclination whatsoever of prejudice.
ayaan hirsi ali
That's what they say, which I think it's very difficult to measure prejudice.
But when I was doing the research for this book, the book that I'm promoting now, I would want to go and see cases.
So the book is dealing with sexual violence against women perpetrated by immigrants.
So if I go to a country like Germany and I say, can you just give me the data, how many sexually violent attacks have taken place in Germany in the last 10 years and how many of those have been perpetrated by immigrants?
Easy question, right?
You expect to just get the answer.
Here it is.
Here are the numbers.
That's not what you get.
What you're told is, we actually don't collect data along ethnic, nationality, or religious lines.
Oh, so we'll never be able to answer that question.
And they say, not really.
I used to know a way of getting around that, which I've applied to other countries, which is the government agencies that are paid to collect the data, that kind of data, they won't do it.
One way of finding out is just go to the courts, because every single court case is open.
If you want to go right here in America, you want to go see what's happening in the criminal court right here, you just register and you say, I'd like to watch this case, and you fill a little bit of paperwork and you go in.
Not in Germany.
In Germany, they say, because of the Second World War and what we did...
It's very, very difficult to get in those so-called public courtrooms.
And so a big part of the book is about just trying to get the data.
joe rogan
Well, if there's no data, if the data is not publicly available, what leads you to suspect that there is an abundance of sexual attacks by these immigrants?
ayaan hirsi ali
It is a collection of the anecdotes, interviews, so talking to people who are supposed to gather the data, and when you say, come on, you don't want to gather the data on nationality, ethnicity, I understand, but what are you seeing?
And they will say, please don't say my name, and then they'll tell you what they're seeing.
joe rogan
Is this you personally have talked to these people that are telling you this?
ayaan hirsi ali
I've personally talked to them and I've also worked with researchers where I personally could not go.
But we also walked the neighborhoods.
We interviewed a number of the victims whose testimonies I have in the book.
And then I went to see some of the politicians.
Just talk to them.
Some of them will say, please don't put my name in the book.
Don't quote me.
But they explain, and the explanations are familiar to me because I've seen this in Holland.
Please don't say, I'm the one who's telling you this.
But yes, we do have a problem, and this is what it looks like.
And then, of course, I would do what you would do right now, which is then, you know, just put it out there.
Because I think if we were to have the precise data of who is exactly perpetrating what kind of crime, we would be able to develop programs to help the perpetrators.
Not just the victims, but the perpetrators and where they come from, so that we can prepare them for assimilation into our society.
joe rogan
Do you think that's possible?
I mean, when someone's indoctrinated into a specific way of thinking about women, that you could immigrate to a place and abandon your preconceived notions?
ayaan hirsi ali
The Danes and the Austrians, they're attempting it.
And they have decided that they're not going to shroud things, that they're not going to obfuscate, that they're going to Gather the data as the data presents itself.
If there is a violent act committed against a woman and it's a white Danish man, then it's white Danish man.
If not, all the other skin colors, nationalities, all the other data points that are now being hidden, the Danes have decided they're not going to hide it.
And yes, they have actually developed programs where they think they can get to these men.
I have looked at a program developed by a man originally from Eritrea.
He describes his attitude to women before he came to Sweden, and he says it's just a fact that men from Certain places of the world, they haven't been taught.
They're not familiar with how European men and women treat each other, and some of them are open to and willing to learn.
Those who don't want to, those who don't want to learn, and those who want to carry on assaulting women, I think they should get out.
joe rogan
The argument against this, this idea that there's a big problem with women being assaulted by these immigrants is that most sexual assaults that women experience are from people they know.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
And that this is always going to be the biggest problem.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
But my book is not about that and I say it in the book.
There have been several books and studies and so much work that is devoted to what we call intimate partner violence.
So sexual violence against women committed by acquaintances and intimate partners.
It's very well known.
That's well documented.
And in some countries, policies are in place that are effective in the sense that they reduce those crimes.
And in some places, those policies have not been adopted or put in place.
But it's a fact.
But what this book describes, Prey, is the public space.
So somebody whom you don't know, never seen before, just comes and assaults you.
And it's not always an individual.
Sometimes it's in groups of two, three, four.
They're young people.
They're new to the country.
They don't even discriminate about whether it is this woman or that woman.
I've talked to 11-year-old kids who've been assaulted all the way to women in their 70s and 80s.
Some of the women may be covered from head to toe.
Some of them may be just in, you know, shorts and t-shirts.
It really doesn't matter to the men who are doing the assaulting.
They look at these women and they see them through a sudden prism, and that is these women are immodest.
They're out and about.
They're uncovered.
They have no male guardians with them.
Therefore, they're for the taking.
They're prey.
And in their heads, there are women, the good women, the modest women.
You don't see those ones on the street.
And if you do, they adhere to certain codes.
They're not alone.
They're not out after dark.
They're covered from head to toe.
They're with their guardians.
So if you...
What we're seeing right now is large numbers of men come from countries and societies where the modesty doctrine that governs the relationship between men and women Yeah, that's the law of the land or the norm of the land.
And when they come to Europe, they can't help themselves.
And the question is, does Europe adapt to them or do they adapt to Europe?
joe rogan
Why do you think in this culture today where there's so much emphasis on stopping sexual assault, why do you think there's a reluctance to communicate with you about this?
Because clearly, if you received so many invitations on these different shows to talk about Heretic, but then Prey comes along.
ayaan hirsi ali
And there's no one who wants to talk about it, yeah.
Fox News, all the various stations of Fox News do.
Lots of podcasts, lots of talk radio, but my publisher could not find it.
It was reviewed in the New York Times.
I didn't like the review, but it was reviewed nonetheless.
It was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.
The New York Post had something, but I know what you're saying.
The previous books I was on, CNN and MSNBC and...
joe rogan
There's a reluctance to discuss this issue.
ayaan hirsi ali
There's a reluctance.
And then the women's magazines.
So there were a number of women's magazines who wouldn't even return the emails.
Why is it?
Because the perpetrators are not white heterosexual men.
If the perpetrators were white heterosexual and they were committing acts of violence on this magnitude, trust me, I wouldn't be the one sitting here.
joe rogan
Do you think they're fearful of these discussions?
Do you think they're worried about being labeled?
Do you think they're worried about retribution?
What do you think they're worried about?
ayaan hirsi ali
What would the retribution be?
Who would the retribution come from?
There would be no retribution except it would come from the woke.
And we now live in this age of cancel culture where people who call themselves woke Our society is divided into those who oppress and those who are oppressed.
And the fact that black men, brown men, men of color are oppressing and raping women and groping them and subjecting them to humiliation That doesn't fit into the matrix of those who are oppressors and those who are victims, because the black man is supposed to be the victim, right?
The immigrant, the asylum seeker, the refugee, he is supposed to be the victim.
They don't have an ideological, in their ideological framework, they don't have a way of dealing with the subject of prey.
They don't have a way of dealing with a man who has escaped violence and civil strife in Syria, who then comes to Germany and rapes an 11 year old.
In their ideological framework, they haven't worked that out.
joe rogan
So their ideological framework is so rigid that they just ignore it.
They're just like, I can't even talk about this.
ayaan hirsi ali
And not only that they can't talk about it, but even silence others who will talk about it.
You know, all the airwaves all day long will be about Governor Andrew Cuomo and somebody he solicited.
But it's not going to be about any of this.
About the girls who are raped, who are gang raped.
Some of them have been killed.
Others have abandoned their neighborhoods and their streets.
Others when they get out of their houses, they have to cover their ears so that they can't hear the sexual assault that is thrown at them, the obscenities that are thrown at them verbally.
They have to walk with people.
They have completely adapted their ways.
And this is in Berlin.
It's in Stockholm.
It's in Amsterdam.
It's in Paris.
It's in all of these places.
There's no coverage of that.
But we are going to have columns and columns and columns about some governor in New York who...
I'm not trying to diminish what he did, which is wrong, if it's true.
But compared to what I'm writing about, come on.
joe rogan
Well, there's easy stories, right?
Like another easy story that has nothing to do with sexual assault is Ted Cruz going to Cancun.
They talked constantly about Ted Cruz going to Cancun.
They talked so little about Biden bombing Syria.
There was so little discussion of it.
It went in and went out.
It was in and out like that.
And then you're still seeing stories about Ted Cruz.
ayaan hirsi ali
And I think if we carry on like this, with our mainstream media selecting stories like this, reporting on things that are trivial, not reporting on things that are really big, like the bombing of Syria, they shouldn't be surprised if in 2024 we get another surprise.
They should not be surprised.
2016, people were surprised.
Oh my god, how could it happen?
Why?
Well, because you ignored most of what was happening.
joe rogan
The trust in mainstream media, I don't know if you've ever paid attention to the polls, but it's shocking.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's not there.
joe rogan
People used to have very high trust in places like CNN or the New York Times.
And now you look at recent polls and it's like, I think it's in the high 30, low 40% range.
ayaan hirsi ali
And that's tragic.
unidentified
It's crazy.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's tragic because if we don't believe the mainstream media in an age of misinformation and disinformation, if the average citizen just looks at these things and says, well, they're all lying, then where are we going to get our information from?
We set ourselves up for problems.
Especially in relationship with adversaries if we carry on like this.
But yeah, that's the answer to your question.
It doesn't fit into the ideology.
joe rogan
Yeah, if you wanted to have some grand scheme to have democracy fall apart, one of the best ways is to not be able to take any information from once-trusted institutions.
No one trusts them anymore.
I mean, that alone leaves us, where are we now?
Then you've got people believing QAnon and all this...
Crazy shit online.
And they don't know who's telling the truth or who's not.
And they say, well, I read on CNN. Like, fucking CNN. Nobody believes CNN. You don't believe CNN. Well, if we can't believe CNN, who can we believe?
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, then you'll say you can't believe CNN and you don't believe CNN because CNN behaved over the course of many years.
They behaved really badly partisan and they dropped their responsibility to inform and instead went into advocacy.
I read a whole analysis written on New York Times that they deliberately decided not to do journalism and go post-journalistic.
So they're now doing post-journalism.
When you do that, you leave a void.
And that void is going to be filled.
And it shouldn't take you by surprise that it's going to be filled by people who disinform and misinform, whether they are domestic or external, foreign.
It's going to happen.
And I think it's...
Hopefully, you know, sometimes I think maybe it's this podcast and, you know, citizens saying, I'm not going to wait around until somebody does something right.
I'm going to start something myself, like you've done, and others.
You know, talk to my fellow citizens, figure out what's going on.
And not rely on the institutions that we used to think we relied on.
But our free press degenerating the way it has in the last decade, all I can say is it's tragic and I feel that sadness.
It's terrible.
joe rogan
There's a tangible lack of real journalism and it's been replaced by tribalism masquerading as journalism.
And tribalism is what we've been talking about this entire conversation.
The problem is people that subject themselves and everyone around them to these rigid ideologies.
Whether these rigid ideologies are religious or whether these rigid ideologies are just political.
It's the same kind of thing.
You are forced to comply.
There's a forced compliance.
All the things we talked about, all these woke issues, where you're attacked if you deviate from these very strict narratives that you're supposed to follow along with.
And this is the problem we're seeing with the far left.
It's the same problem we're seeing with the far right.
It's rigid ideologies, and it's this lack of objectivity, and it's a lack of any one unbeknownst, Unbiased, objective source of information that we can get, where we can find out and decide for ourselves.
What is the interpretation of these things?
When you deny people the information, the objective information, because you don't want that to empower the side that you're opposed to, you're no longer a journalist.
You're an activist.
And if you think that's okay, to be an activist journalist, Journalism is supposed to be about getting people information.
It's supposed to be about unbiased information.
It's supposed to be about the purest, most Most objective version of the truth that you could possibly get to the people, and there's a great value in that.
But that great value has been cast out in favor of things that get more ratings and more clicks, and in favor of these clickbait articles and trying to get as many advertisers squeezed into your page as you can.
I mean, this is what it's come to.
And it's very dangerous for people trying to figure out the truth, especially people that work all day.
Maybe they have some job that's incredibly detail-oriented, and they have to focus on it.
And then they have children, and they have families, and they don't have time to sit down and analyze what's happening.
In Yemen.
They don't have time.
They don't have time to figure out why aren't we getting these stimulus checks?
What the fuck is going on?
They don't have time.
They don't have time for all these things.
They don't have time for all these things they've been promised.
They don't have time to understand what's happening.
They get narratives and they belong to a tribe and then they don't want to be chastised by their neighbors.
They don't want anybody to be mad at them.
So they just stick with whatever it is, whether they're right-wing or whether they're woke, whatever it is.
It's easier to just go along with the narrative.
But there's no one in charge and there's no wisdom involved in crafting these narratives.
ayaan hirsi ali
Right.
And so exactly what you describe is this complete lack of leadership.
So political leadership is lacking.
It's of such low quality.
It's astonishing.
And then leadership in journalism is not even there anymore.
Precisely as you describe it, it's the clickbaits, the bottom line.
And then the farther you go, you know, leadership in education and leadership elsewhere.
And these things feed off of one another.
And when you talk about tribalism, I can tell you it's not an attractive thing.
I know Americans love to cheer for this group against that, but if you come from a tribal society, if you go now to a tribal society, what you see is not attractive.
It's always zero sum.
What you want to have, the other tribe has, and there's no way both of you can have it.
So you go to great lengths to get it for your tribe.
And very often, a lot of blood is shed to get that to happen.
There is a little bit of everything, not enough.
And I'm always asking myself, why do Americans think that dividing our society up into collectives, into groups, and I don't care what that particular group, what they have in common, but to sit in a group and think we have something in common that they don't have, and we're going to take a hostile attitude to the other side, and you do that, and you have to ask yourself, where is that going to end?
joe rogan
I don't think Americans have seen the real ramifications of that.
And that's why they're adhering to these tribal lines.
When you see the right going against the left or the left going against the right, I don't think they understand where this ends.
And I think what we saw on January 6th, that's just the beginning of it.
That's a tiny little rumble.
That's what I think.
ayaan hirsi ali
On the other hand, when I travel around the country and I tend to talk to people, I seek them out and I will talk to the people actually I'm not supposed to talk to.
And I find wonderful people.
They're polite.
joe rogan
When you say the people you're not supposed to talk to, who do you mean?
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, the people who have been called deplorables and all sorts of names and they'd be wearing MAGA hats.
They'd be...
I just, you know...
Start up a conversation and I've not come across people wherever I go who I find display hostility.
Even though it's clear, it's written all over me that I'm not one of them, that I'm different, I'm an outsider, I have an accent.
Still, I find that people treat me in America with a great deal of hospitality.
So there's so much that's not lost.
And I say this when I go to, I don't know, I go to different places.
There are people who probably have never, I might be the first outsider they've ever seen.
I don't know.
I'm just saying.
And the way people respond, you know, the please, thank you, just the civility, the kindness.
And if I chat on and ask them about where they think the country is going, they don't seem at all disturbed.
They think, oh, you know, it's all good.
Some of them say, we don't like all these divisions.
They don't like the polarization, as far as they're informed about the polarization.
But sometimes it looks like the general public, to them this is all noise.
This is all just something that's happening somewhere outside of their realm of daily existence.
Am I wrong?
joe rogan
I think there's that, but I think it's also what we were talking about earlier, that there's just too much to pay attention to.
And so people, they form convenient narratives, and they stick with them.
I think one of the things you're talking about is one-on-one communication, which is really how people are supposed to talk to each other.
And most things can be worked out when you really do just have one-on-one communication with people, especially if You both have...
Most people have...
Your end desire is harmony.
Most people's end desire is you want food for your family.
You want to live in a safe community.
You want to be able to do what you want to do for a living.
That's most people.
And the idea that this person or this group is going to stop you from doing that is one of the narratives that's a real problem in this country.
And...
A big problem we're experiencing right now is censorship in tech.
And the fact that big tech is essentially...
It's not just on the right, but it's disproportionately on the right.
The people on the right are being censored.
People on the left are being censored as well.
But it's usually anti-establishment people on the left that are being censored.
And they're now starting to understand, like, oh, this is a real problem.
Like, people that were cheering on censorship are now being censored.
And they're recognizing, like, the Internet is supposed to be a place where information can be freely distributed.
But then you go, well, these people are giving out bad information.
We have to stop them.
Well, bad information, but can't you stop them by giving out good information?
No, no, no.
We just have to silence them.
Well, then they're going to go to this other place.
We're going to close that place down, too.
Well, then you're going to have a civil war, because now you only have one side being represented disproportionately, and these people are going to be furious, and they still can vote.
If you can't stop those people from voting, that's how you get Donald Trump, because Donald Trump comes around and he says, hey, these people don't like you.
They hate America.
I love America.
And they go, I love America too!
And they fucking killed Parler!
And then they're voting!
They're voting for him again in 2024!
And that's a real probability.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
I, um, um...
I've been asked many times, what would you censor?
And I would say I wouldn't censor anything.
Look, screaming fire in a theater full of people that's locked up, I think in that sense you can say we have almost 100% consensus that that's a bad thing.
You shouldn't be doing that.
But any kind of...
Any kind of information, any kind of speech that doesn't hurt anyone physically.
joe rogan
Right.
You're not calling for someone's death or doxing someone.
ayaan hirsi ali
You're not inciting.
You're not calling.
You're not doxing.
You're not doing any of that.
But you are shouting your political beliefs from the rooftops.
Even if I hate them, I think you still should be able to do that.
That is how I understand the First Amendment.
That's how I understand free speech.
Now, when I have conversations with people from big tech, they say, but that relationship is between the government and those who are governed.
Private companies can do whatever they want.
That's true.
Private companies can choose what kind of speech they're going to promote and what kind of speech they're not going to promote, depending on their business objectives and their bottom line.
I totally agree with that.
But what you said earlier, if those big tech companies are seen as monopolies or oligarchies, then they proceed to empower one side and silence the other.
It should be a matter of time before government starts to interfere.
It should be.
It is a matter of time before government is going.
I'm against government intervening in business.
I would let the market be the market.
I would rather have competition against these large companies than for them to be shut down or broken up.
But if they continue to behave this way, I think, you know, they're basically asking for it.
It's not what you and I think.
It's what's going to end up happening.
Because of the power that they amass and the power that they're seen to be amassing, In which case they're seeing that one political party is outsourcing censorship that they can't do, the party can't do it because of the constitution, but it's outsourcing it to these companies to do it for them.
That's how things are seen at this point.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
The Democratic Party cannot censor because of the First Amendment, but they can get Google, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube to do it for them.
joe rogan
It's also the argument that they're a private company.
They are a private company, but we've never had a private company that's the main town hall for distributing any information before.
We've never had anything like that before.
We need some kind of new rules.
We need some kind of new amendments that deal with what the internet is.
If you have a portal that has literally billions of people like Facebook has, you can't just say you're a private company.
Because when you look at, you know, if you've...
If you've seen any of these documentaries on social media, and you've talked to people that understand how Facebook affects politics in foreign countries, especially when you buy phones and Facebook comes pre-installed on the phone, and it's the only way these people communicate with each other.
And they're using these things to spread lies about opposing parties.
They're using them to cause civil wars.
It's not just simply a private company.
So are they a utility or are they publishers?
Because if they're publishers, they're responsible for every single thing that gets put on.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes, liability.
joe rogan
Including all the civil wars, including all the lies, including murder, including all the different things that have been perpetrated because of their platform.
They're responsible for that.
Well, then they're not responsible for it?
Well, then it's an open speech platform.
It should be open to everyone.
It should be like a public utility.
Like you have a right to express yourself, just like you have a right to water.
Just like you have a right to electricity.
You have a right to utilities.
No one can say, I don't like the way you think about this.
You can't have electricity.
They can't have that, right?
That's not legal.
Like even the KKK can have electricity.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
Right?
Well, that's how it should be with the internet.
And it's a messy, ugly, disgusting thing to hear horrible opinions and evil opinions.
But the only way, I think, to combat those is to have much better thought out, much better expressed good opinions.
And so, over time, people see that this is logical and clear and true, and this other stuff is bullshit.
ayaan hirsi ali
You're saying let the audience decide for themselves, which is what I agree with.
But I think, look, we're watching in real time.
I don't think that it's sustainable for these large companies to carry on Writing this on this lane where they avoid liability, but they have the privileges of being publishers, it's a matter of time before something happens.
I just hope that the right thing happens and not the wrong thing.
joe rogan
It is a matter of time.
I mean, Brett Weinstein's, his idea, what was it called?
Unity?
unidentified
Theory of Everything?
joe rogan
No, no, no, no.
That's Eric.
He was trying to bring sensible people from the right and sensible people from the left together.
ayaan hirsi ali
Right.
joe rogan
And it was a unity project.
And he had a Twitter page.
They cancelled his page.
They just killed his page.
Unity 2020. So he had this idea of bringing sensible people and trying to create a third-party option other than the left and the right.
And they just killed his page for no reason.
ayaan hirsi ali
That's really painful.
It makes me feel the way, you know, when Amazon stopped selling, when Harry turned Sally, Harry turned into Sally, you know, a book like that.
Why would Amazon do that?
joe rogan
They have decided they are going to stop selling any book that they believe promotes hate.
Now this is the thing, that book expressed in many different places.
Love and respect and a call for fair treatment of transgender people.
They were just dealing with the issue of trans people.
The same as Abigail Schreier's book.
ayaan hirsi ali
Abigail Schreier's book, yeah.
joe rogan
Yes, Irreversible.
ayaan hirsi ali
Irreversible Damage.
joe rogan
Irreversible Damage, yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
Which I think everybody should buy.
joe rogan
Why is this subject so important to you?
Is this something like an attack vector where people have come after you about your opinions about this?
ayaan hirsi ali
Oh, you mean the transgender issue?
It has to do with women, doesn't it?
I mean, I think, we talked about it earlier, and so has Abigail, everyone.
We want to promote transgender rights, privileges, transgender dignity.
I think that's a good thing.
joe rogan
But not at the expense of women.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, and what I don't understand is why it has to be lose-lose.
Why can't we promote transgender dignity, freedom, rights without taking anything away from women?
Why do we have to do it that way?
That's for me the puzzle.
Some of the transgender activists seem to think that the only way that they can move forward as a group is by diminishing women.
And I know some of the examples that are discussed are, you know, what happens in prison when men, heterosexual men, pretend to be trans and they rape women.
Another good example is in the sports arena where, you know, young women train.
They also want scholarships, but they think they're training against other women.
And somebody who was born a boy and later becomes a man, I mean, competing with a woman.
I can tell you, you guys have bigger lungs and a bigger heart.
It's just, it's, He's going to win.
There's all of that.
And then there's a subject that Abigail touches on where there's contagion.
Young girls hating their bodies.
That's not new.
We've known that for ages and ages.
As long as there were young girls, there were always some who just didn't like their bodies.
And if some of them, remember in the day, bulimia, anorexia, that stuff.
joe rogan
Cutting.
ayaan hirsi ali
Cutting, it still happens.
And I think the trend today is for some young women to think, I don't even want to be a girl to begin with.
I'm going to be a guy.
And then under pressure from other teenagers, they go to great lengths to make some of these changes that are irreversible and harmful and for all time.
And I'm not even so much upset with the transgender lobby.
I'm more upset with the adults in the room, like the doctors, the people who took the oath to make other people better and to heal and to cure.
They're the ones who are doing things behind the parents' backs to give kids some of these I would say really dramatic drugs and surgeries without the parents knowing.
I mean there's so much wrong with transgender activism right now that I think now is the time to speak about that.
I don't understand why that is called hate speech.
I don't see anything hateful about it.
None of us are hating anyone.
Again, we repeat wholeheartedly, transgender people should have the same rights, freedoms, and dignities we have.
But if there are unintended consequences, if there are things happening that they don't want to girls, children, and young women, why would talking about that and dealing with that issue be hate?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a forced compliance thing.
It's a forced compliance with the ideology.
And it's not just young girls, it's young boys as well.
I don't know if you saw the conversation that Rand Paul had with the transgender woman who is being appointed by the Biden administration.
Did you see that?
ayaan hirsi ali
I didn't see that.
I'm sorry I missed it.
joe rogan
He was talking about this very thing, and the person who was appointed by the Biden administration gave the same answers over and over again.
Transgender medicine is very complex and robust, and if I was appointed, I'd be happy to have you come into my office.
And talk about this.
And so then he goes on again.
You're avoiding my question.
I'm asking you about children.
You can't even go to the ER to have a cut sewn up without a doctor if you're a child.
Now you're allowing children without their parents' permission to go and have these incredibly complex procedures and all these.
And this person gives the exact same answer.
Senator, transgender medicine is a very complex and robust study with rigorous, like, it's like a robot.
ayaan hirsi ali
And he's like a robot.
He's talking like a robot, yeah.
No, I think it just, when I became, I wasn't aware of any of this, I became aware of it through Abigail, her book, and others, and I thought, but this is just like female genital mutilation.
It's children being cut and harmed.
And you can't reverse this.
And there are now also the people who are now old enough to say, I didn't want this to happen to me.
A lot of people.
But we got into this subject because of what's called hate speech.
What is hate to you and maybe love to me?
I don't know.
How can you even define hate speech?
What is hate speech?
If you try and think really deep about freedom of speech, the First Amendment, why it came about, it's the speech that offends, the speech that hurts, the speech that people hate.
That's the speech that's protected.
Why would you protect good manners and That's good manners.
That's politeness.
That's all fine, but the speech that needs constitutional protection is the speech that hurts.
joe rogan
To me, it's emblematic of this confusion in our culture now and also this newfound ability to communicate with massive amounts of people and the influence that goes along with that because If you do say anything that could be attributed by some people, you could categorize it as hate speech, which is very flippant the way they use this.
Like if you discuss like Abigail Schreier, who says over and over again on the podcast that I did with her, we opened up the podcast by saying, let's just before we get into this, let's say I have nothing but respect for people that are trans.
We're not even talking about grown adults.
We're not talking about people that I believe they are born in the wrong body.
I think that's a real thing.
But the thing is, how do you know?
This is not a binary thing.
It's not a one or a zero.
It's hard to figure out.
So how do you know when you're a young person whether or not that's the case with you?
Well, you've got to let them become an adult and have their own mind.
A person's frontal lobe isn't even fully formed until they're 25 years old.
To tell a three-year-old child, you know that you're supposed to be a boy, you know you're supposed to be a girl, that's...
ayaan hirsi ali
And start medication at that age, I think that is insane.
joe rogan
It's insane, but what's insane...
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, bring in the parents, bring in the community, you know, if...
I don't know.
joe rogan
The resistance to saying it's insane is insane.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
And you're attacked.
You're attacked.
And you're attacked by people that...
There's certain people that just don't want you to, in any way, question what they think should be done.
And they think that there's a lot of people out there that are trans that are stopped from being able to express that at an early age.
And they might be right.
But the thing is, we don't know when someone's a child.
Children are malleable.
And one of the things that Rand Paul talks about is how many children that if they, that there was a study that he brings up in this conversation, if they weren't, if they didn't go trans, they would just become gay or they would just, they would keep their genitals they would just become gay or they would just, they would They would just accept whoever they are without having to go through some medical transition.
It's a complex, really fascinating subject.
It's a strange moment in our culture that this has moved to the forefront and it's forcing us to look at what it is to be trans.
But it's also forcing us to look at what decisions that we're making because we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
We don't want people to think that we're assholes.
We don't want people to think that we're discriminatory and that you're allowing children To be pushed in one direction or the other.
We know children are easily manipulated.
We know people are very malleable.
People are very easily influenced.
And if we don't acknowledge just actual human nature when making these decisions...
ayaan hirsi ali
Especially teenage girls.
Teenage girls, among other teenage girls, are easily influenced.
Easily.
And if today the new contagion, let's call it the madness of the day, is transitioning from whatever sex you were born into, I don't know what the next generation will bring, but this is something we're familiar with.
I want to go back to the question when you asked me, why are you interested in this subject?
I think my interest is always sparked when I find a lot of activity around people trying to create a taboo where there shouldn't be a taboo.
Like, we can have a common-sense conversation about transgender issues in 2021, can't we?
We can have perfectly rational conversations about any subject.
Tell me, you name it, and I'll tell you.
Like, we can.
Maybe we can't.
Some people can't.
I want to count myself among those few people who say, you know, hit me with anything.
I'll have the conversation with you.
But then it becomes a problem when people say, we can't have that conversation.
What you say and what you do, to me that is hate.
And I'm going to take action.
I'm going to convince the tech companies that To scrub you out.
I'm going to convince the government to adopt hate legislation.
I'm going to try and get you cancelled from your job or try to get you never to be invited to this or that place.
That's the sort of stuff that I would say sparks my interest in why would you do that?
joe rogan
Well, the Biden administration has already caved into this.
They've already allowed people to compete in the sport in high school, whatever gender they identify with.
That is such an open-ended thing because that's not requiring any change whatsoever, hormonal, surgical, anything.
ayaan hirsi ali
So you can just say you're a girl and compete in my...
unidentified
I'm a girl.
joe rogan
I can wrestle with you.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And that's happening.
ayaan hirsi ali
That's just going to fall apart.
joe rogan
It's madness.
ayaan hirsi ali
It is madness.
joe rogan
It's madness.
You know, someone pointed out, Heather Hying had a thread about this, and she was talking about the, as a biologist, talking about the biological differences between men and women, because the ACLU had pointed some, they made some nonsense thread on Twitter, where it was like, fact!
Myth.
You know, like myth.
There's men have a biological...
Trans women have a biological advantage over biological women.
Or have a physical advantage over biological women.
Myth.
Like, that's not a myth.
So Heather Hying had this very detailed Twitter thread that she put on it.
And in it, one of the people put about Florence Griffith Joyner's world record that, like...
Most kids in high school, boys, break that.
The top boys in high school all break her world record.
ayaan hirsi ali
High school.
joe rogan
There's a giant difference in physical sports.
And the idea that you're somehow discriminating because you don't want a trans woman who is a biological male to compete in Against biological females who have inherent physical disadvantages.
This is why we don't allow men to compete against women in women's sports.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's very clear.
Do you see how, as a woman, I would feel threatened by a development like that?
joe rogan
Yes, I do.
ayaan hirsi ali
And girls and...
joe rogan
Yes.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's not like we're being asked to work harder, which probably we are as women, but we are asked to compete with others.
We are being asked to compete with guys and we can't.
joe rogan
It's also crazy that a small minority of people, because that's what this is in terms of the people that believe this is fair.
ayaan hirsi ali
And it's belief.
joe rogan
Yeah, belief.
ayaan hirsi ali
There's no science for it.
joe rogan
Exactly.
Not only is there no science, there's science that points to the opposite.
ayaan hirsi ali
Right.
joe rogan
There's world records being broken left and right by trans women, and that's a fact.
You could go into cycling or powerlifting.
In fact, the Olympic powerlifting team has now stopped allowing trans women...
What Olympic powerlifting federation has stopped allowing trans women to compete as women?
Because they're just breaking records.
ayaan hirsi ali
So would I be too dumb if I said, what if we have men competing against men, women competing against women, and trans people competing against trans people depending on what they transition from?
joe rogan
They want you to think that a trans person is whatever sex they identify with, period.
Like I said about a man who has sex with women and fathers a bunch of children and then decides that he's a woman.
He's always been a woman.
And this is this crazy ideological thing that we're dealing with.
This tribal, almost religious belief.
ayaan hirsi ali
It is religious, yeah.
joe rogan
It is very similar.
And people that have been in cults, people that have been in very strict ideological religions, they understand this and they reject it.
The thing is, most Americans don't agree with this, but yet the president...
Made this a law.
They're not going to get federal funding unless they comply with this.
This is what's madness.
This is madness.
And people are freaking out.
And women and biological females who have worked to get these scholarships in athletics, they're not going to be able to.
What is it, the Olympic Powerlifting Federation?
USA Powerlifting, I think?
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
They won't get it, no.
joe rogan
Yeah, that is by far the biggest example.
ayaan hirsi ali
There is no middle ground because it's a belief system.
It's religious, so there's no middle ground.
joe rogan
It is like religion.
ayaan hirsi ali
Because I remember it was a few years ago when the bathroom walls broke out.
I'm hearing about it, like, what are these bathroom walls about?
And my first response was, why don't we just give them their own bathrooms?
What is wrong with that?
joe rogan
Because they want to be a woman or they want to be a man.
ayaan hirsi ali
They want to be a man or they want to be a woman.
joe rogan
They want to be recognized as a 100% woman or a 100% man.
And there's even a school of thought that if you're a biological man and you won't date a trans woman, that you're a bigot, that you're transphobic, that you don't want to date a biological male who's transitioned because you're a bigot.
ayaan hirsi ali
That would be blackmailing someone into dating, which is...
joe rogan
Well, it's just crazy.
It is one of the most human entanglements in terms of the way people are twisting language and utilizing ideology to force people into compliance.
ayaan hirsi ali
And then making it into something that government has to execute because what you're telling me about what then the administration does is ratify that.
So tomorrow if someone else comes a new craziness they'll have to ratify that too.
joe rogan
I had no opinion about this.
I was live and let live do whatever you want until there was a woman who was a biological man for 30 years and then started competing in mixed martial arts as a woman.
Without telling her opponents that she was a man for 30 years.
She transitioned for two years.
So two years later, she starts fighting women.
And didn't let them know.
Beating the shit out of them.
ayaan hirsi ali
Of course.
joe rogan
Yeah, but it's rough to watch.
When you watch, it looks like a man beating up women.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
And I was like, this is fucking crazy.
And people are like, you're a bigot.
And I'm like, what?
What is happening here?
This is like five years ago.
I was like, what happened?
I'm waking up going...
Did I miss something?
This is crazy.
ayaan hirsi ali
Any woman's activist will say that is crazy.
Not bigoted, it's crazy.
joe rogan
Crazy.
ayaan hirsi ali
And it shouldn't happen.
And I think this is another challenge for feminism, at least the feminists who are with it, to say, this is a development.
We want all things good for the transgender people, but no way are you going to do this to women.
joe rogan
Well, also, I was...
Not opposed to a transgender woman fighting a female if the female knew.
The thing is, she held it back from the first two opponents by saying that it was a medical issue and she didn't have to disclose it.
I'm like, that is fucking crazy talk.
That's crazy, and she knows it.
Everybody knows.
But that was where the ideological battleground started.
And I was like, this is crazy.
This is really crazy.
ayaan hirsi ali
The thing that's going to happen is, we'll withdraw, retreat into our own little tribal, so women in associations from now onwards will be looking out to see if there's someone who looks different from them and won't let them in.
And just think about the tragedy of that.
And the same thing is going to happen with men who feel like they've been hounded by the MeToo people.
They'll just stay away from girls and you're going to see the top echelons of Organizations and corporations become male only because women, you know, it's just too confusing to be around them.
So all of these things that they say that they're pushing for, the rights of the people they're fighting for, those people will suffer.
The vulnerable will suffer.
Because just listening to the story you told me, you can just about imagine all wrestlers Women wrestlers thinking, wait a second.
Let me just figure out who's wrestling with me.
We have a bunch of people isolated.
It's just sad.
It's tragic.
Whereas if we just talked openly about these things, we could figure it out.
joe rogan
In Texas, it's actually gone the other way, which is awful as well.
There was a high school girl who was transitioning to be a boy and taking testosterone, and they forced her to compete against women.
She wanted to compete against boys.
And they wouldn't let her.
Or him.
They wouldn't let him.
She's transitioning to be a boy.
They said, no, you're a biological female.
You have to compete against females.
So she's cheating.
Because she's taking testosterone.
So she's far stronger than these other women.
Because she's on this hormone.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's weird.
Always the women who are supposed to...
joe rogan
Well, that's the thing.
It's like biological women in all these situations are the ones that are losing out.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
Over and over and over again.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
And I think many of us, we're embracing, we're happy, we're open, we want to change.
We want things to change for the better and for good, but if you then cut off the possibility to talk about, and what do women do?
They talk.
We like to talk a lot.
If you cut that avenue off and you start calling everything hate speech, then you get to a place of really nastiness and suspicion.
unidentified
It became a big issue with real bigotry.
joe rogan
Yeah, with real bigotry.
It's just so confusing.
It's so confusing.
And they say, you know, the argument was like, well, it's not yours to discuss.
We're human beings.
Everything is ours to discuss.
And if there's something that the vast majority of the population disagree with because of science, especially when you talk about sports, you're talking about science.
The vast majority of the population do not think it's fair that biological males who transition to become women compete against biological females.
Who've never had testosterone flowing through their body.
They haven't gone through puberty.
They haven't gone through this, you know, 30 years of being a male and the tendon strength and the difference in the bone structure and the difference in the way the mind works.
All of it's different.
ayaan hirsi ali
So Joe, is there any one scientist, a real scientist who will come on your show and tell you that there are more than two sexes?
joe rogan
I don't know.
I've never had someone offer that.
I'm sure there's real scientists that are also woke.
There's real scientists that are super religious, right?
There's real scientists that are fundamentalist Christians.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, those are the creationists, but the creationists will say they just want to separate what they believe from the science that they practice.
But I'm wondering on this issue, if you will actually find a scientist, peer-reviewed scientist, to come and sit here and say there's more than just male and female, but there's something else, a third or a fourth or a fifth or a hundredth.
joe rogan
I think people will say that there's certainly a spectrum in the way the genders are expressed.
Like, there's very feminine men and very masculine women.
But, you know, I had an argument with a professor about this on the podcast once, and it was the most nonsense argument I've ever had.
He's like, well, what's the difference?
There is no male and there is no female.
I go, if you get a puppy...
And the puppy's got a penis, but you wanted a girl puppy.
Do you go, hey man, what the fuck's going on?
Like, what do you do?
And that was where the rubber hit the road.
Because, like, when you're talking about animals, we agree.
There's a difference.
There's...
Clearly, there's something going on where a man identifies as a woman and he feels much better being a woman.
And I think you should be 100% allowed to do that and we should accept it and we should love you and we should treat you as equal.
But that's not what we're talking about.
ayaan hirsi ali
That's not what we're talking about.
And the other way around, if a woman feels like she needs to transition, that's not what we're talking about.
Because I think this conversation is going to be only people...
joe rogan
Can you push the microphone up too?
ayaan hirsi ali
It's only going to be about people who agree with one another on either side.
So people who agree on that side will sit that side and they'll talk to their echo chamber and we'll have our own echo chamber and so on.
But if you wanted to start the conversation somewhere, we might have to start talking about how many genders are there.
And if all scientists agree, there are just two, and then we take it from there.
And then you have all the gender traits, and then I think you can get...
Maybe I'm just being too naive, maybe too faithful, have too much faith in...
In human beings.
But if we start with what we know and what is, then we can negotiate the rest.
joe rogan
My concern is that we're moving towards a genderless species that only...
That only reproduces through some sort of experiment.
I really wonder, when you see the future of human beings, if science continues to move genetic technology into some crazy new direction, we could move to some sort of a genderless species a thousand years from now.
This might be the first sort of expressions of that.
It's not...
When you see aliens, right?
I know this is a stupid thing to talk about, but indulge me for a moment.
They're all genderless.
They have these big heads and these little tiny bodies, and they're genderless.
If you compare us to primates, like chimpanzees or gorillas, they're much more muscular and hairy, and they have very clear genitals, especially chimps.
We might be moving in that direction.
This might be the first sort of first gasps of this, that we might recognize that there's a real problem.
We were talking about rape earlier.
We were talking about sexual harassment of women and attacking of women.
These are male versus female issues, right?
Maybe the solution to that permanently is to eliminate gender altogether and reproduce through some newfound method.
It sounds crazy.
I know it sounds crazy, but I wonder what this is.
There's many people that have been trying to study and figure out why we have this obsession with gender, why we have this obsession with what we're currently grasping now, and this gender fluidity notion that people can bounce back and forth between those genders.
ayaan hirsi ali
But we don't.
I think a majority of humanity don't.
There is a very small group of people who happen to be very loud, who are obsessed with this.
And you said a thousand years from now.
I'm thinking, what's going to happen a thousand days from now?
And in the meantime, if there's going to be all this suffering of young girls and young boys, if we could agree on some objective truth to which, you know, Right now I was thinking when we were talking about objectivity and science, about Helen Placrose, Peter Boghossian, I don't know if you've heard of them, James Lindsay.
They're trying to fight this ideology, critical race theory, critical justice.
It goes by so many different names.
One of the things that these critical justice theory people hold is there is no scientific truth.
So there's no objectivity.
Everything is subjective.
So if you want to believe that there are a thousand genders, then there are a thousand genders.
If you want to believe there is one, there is one.
Who are you and who are we to judge?
And so one way of pushing back against those people is by refusing That claim by saying there is indeed science, there is objective truth, there are objective standards, objective criteria.
And right now, not a thousand years from now, but right now we just have two genders.
It's male or female.
Totally accept that you can transition this way or the other, but just as a given, as a biological, scientific, objective truth given, there are just two genders.
joe rogan
Well, Bret Weinstein was on Clubhouse and they were screaming at him, calling him a transphobe because he won't recognize they, them.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, exactly.
The pronouns.
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like it's not necessary.
We have sufficient pronouns.
We can just say she.
ayaan hirsi ali
She.
joe rogan
Caitlyn Jenner is a she.
Let's say that.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
So what we're then doing is we are slowly, because they demand, and when I say they, I'm not talking about the transgender community.
I'm just talking about the woke community in its entirety.
People who believe in that ideology, that everything is subjective.
If we adopt their language, they see language as a tool.
As a tool for them to get power and establish themselves as the powerful.
joe rogan
And to force compliance.
ayaan hirsi ali
And the force compliance, and I think one of the ways of resisting that is by objecting to that and saying, I'm just not going to use a pronoun for a singular person.
You know, he, she...
That's as far as I go.
They, if there are multiple people, we, if there are multiple people, and whatever else that they come, I'll use the word equality to mean what it means and not sneak in equity to mean something else.
Equality, which I think of as equality of opportunity, at least when we're talking in terms of justice.
Yes.
quality of outcomes yeah which is a completely different agenda but I mean if we constantly yeah stop them right there and say first of all before we carry on the conversation let's see if we're talking about the same thing right what I've noticed in conversation with those people is they hate definitions they just hate they don't want to talk about the meaning meaning of words.
They just want to impose what the word is supposed to mean on you.
Like you were describing Weinstein in the clubhouse scene where they're saying he should use they instead of Don't even go that far.
It's like, what are we talking about?
And then they despise you.
At least they despise me when I do that.
And I can always hide behind the fact that because English is not my fast language, I really just want to understand what you're saying.
joe rogan
Right.
Yeah, you have an out clause there.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, so do you though.
Everyone has and has clothes.
joe rogan
Right.
But the thing is, they want to stop those things and immediately label you as an oppressor, as a bigot, as a this, as a that.
You're a transphobe, you're homophobic, you're racist.
Whatever it is that they can shove at you to stop the conversation dead in its tracks and stop analyzing what you're actually saying.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
And a lot of them don't want to debate.
So in many debate forums, I've been asked to come and debate with the woke and I would say, okay, bring them on.
They won't come.
They just won't come.
joe rogan
Well, who would be representing the woke?
ayaan hirsi ali
Well, like if you take the most famous of them, Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo...
joe rogan
Robert DeAngelo is the woman who wrote White Fragility.
ayaan hirsi ali
White Fragility, yeah.
So I'm happy to debate with her in a civilized way.
I wouldn't be upset.
I wouldn't scream and shout.
I wouldn't be rude.
But I will have to ask for, what do whites mean?
Like, what are we talking about?
I'm not going to go into any debate without knowing what the proposition is.
What am I opposing or proposing?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ayaan hirsi ali
And that takes us to words and what they mean.
And that then creates, I would say, a very uncomfortable situation for them.
joe rogan
I don't know if it's that simple.
I know what you're saying, but I don't know if it's that simple.
I think there's an agreed upon They, on at least the woke side, the rigid nature of the ideology you're supposed to subscribe to.
like that they subscribe to it and then they surround themselves with all sorts of other people that agree with what they're saying and then they don't understand when everybody freaks out about how crazy their definitions are and they just call everybody racist or they call everybody homophobic or they just figure out some sort of a label to dismiss in its tracks if you can have a conversation with those people without any labels or name-calling that would be very fascinating Okay, you're not allowed to call someone a colonist.
You're not allowed to call someone a racist.
You're not allowed to do any of those things.
Just explain through words what you mean.
ayaan hirsi ali
By colonists.
joe rogan
Yeah.
What do you mean by all these things that you're discussing?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
What are the definitions?
ayaan hirsi ali
And the context would be, it's okay for them to bring their cheerleaders.
That's fine.
But the audience has to be made up also of some people who are objective.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's hard to describe.
unidentified
I mean, how do you make them fill out a form?
joe rogan
Take a test?
ayaan hirsi ali
No, I'm confident that most people would like I think most people are actually not woke.
joe rogan
Most people, I agree.
ayaan hirsi ali
Most people are not.
But they're scared.
joe rogan
Yes.
ayaan hirsi ali
They don't want to be seen as not compassionate.
Most people want to be compassionate.
Most people want to be polite.
They want to be generous.
They want to be seen as reasonable.
joe rogan
Right.
ayaan hirsi ali
And so for so many, and even more, some of them actually start to believe when they're accused of racism, they kind of believe it.
And when that's all your privilege, they look around and they think, yeah, I am.
And they feel bad about having that privilege.
But I think most people don't really agree with the thesis or the reasons that the woke people hand them as, you're a racist, therefore you should do XYZ. They don't agree with it.
joe rogan
Most people I think that didn't grow up with it.
I think the problem with this woke shit is the same problem with any religion that you grow up with.
When you were talking about growing up and believing in the religion that had been taught to you, like when you were a child, When you were learning that and that's how you grew up, you thought that's how the world worked.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
That is what happens when people go to college and they learn all this woke shit.
That's their religion.
It becomes how they view the world.
These definitions are very clearly defined by their peers.
Everyone agrees to it.
If you deviate, there's punishments.
There's social punishments.
You're chastised, you're ostracized from the community, and you don't want that.
ayaan hirsi ali
It's like a cult.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like a lot of crazy belief systems.
There's a lot of crazy belief systems that people join and they agree to, and when you agree and they know you're agreeing, they can guarantee that you're going to Accept a certain pattern of behavior, and then they can predict what you're thinking and doing, and they know where you're going.
It's easy.
They got you boxed in.
You're a fundamentalist Christian, so you believe X. You're a Mormon, so you believe Y. It's no different with wokeness.
ayaan hirsi ali
With wokeness, yeah.
It's become a religion.
joe rogan
Yeah, and that's the problem.
The problem is a lot of people are going to learn.
It's no less preposterous than any really crazy religion and no less accepted.
And the problem, the difference is it's actually being taught in schools.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's the difference.
And I think you and I are older.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
And we are not involved in the system as children that is developing these kids that are going to grow up and think that this is the way to live.
And this is no different than someone who grows up in a perpetual religious environment where the same things are being taught generation after generation like you were talking about as you grew up.
That you were supposed to comply.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
And even if you don't agree with it, You'll learn to agree with it.
You'll learn to comply.
I think that same shit is happening right now with wokeness.
ayaan hirsi ali
That is scary.
joe rogan
It is scary.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
When I was listening to that Clubhouse conversation with Brett Weinstein that everybody's freaking out about, I was like, holy shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
This is how young kids are treating this guy?
This is how young kids, they think this is the right way to communicate with people?
That this is normal stuff?
ayaan hirsi ali
And they are getting to teacher training colleges and teachers.
joe rogan
Yes.
ayaan hirsi ali
So if you indoctrinate the teacher trainers and then let them lose into the schools and they train, it's pretty scary stuff.
joe rogan
It is scary.
What's scary is that this has made its way into United States government policy in terms of how children are being with sports in schools.
Yeah.
The Biden administration has accepted this.
Because they lick their finger, they saw where the wind's blowing, and they go, yeah, the woke want this.
And so they think that this is the vast majority of the population.
But most people who are grown up, who have jobs, they don't believe that.
They don't think that's fair.
But a lot of woke people do.
And a lot more people than I think we believe.
And I think it is just like you were talking about...
Fill in the blank.
Whatever fundamentalist religion.
ayaan hirsi ali
Religion, yeah.
joe rogan
That's what it is.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
Blasphemy.
So if you blaspheme, exactly.
joe rogan
Exactly.
ayaan hirsi ali
Stray away from the orthodoxy, you get punished.
joe rogan
Exactly.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
joe rogan
Exactly.
ayaan hirsi ali
Oh, gosh.
I wanted us to end on a happy note.
joe rogan
But don't you think that's probably the case?
ayaan hirsi ali
No, I think from what I have seen, so I'm talking about adults whom I have to deal with, they do come across as believers.
They don't come across as arguing a point, exactly, as thinkers.
They come across as believers.
They get upset.
And that's why they call people labels.
joe rogan
Yes.
ayaan hirsi ali
You know, the word blasphemy, you're a blasphemer.
If you're a believing Muslim, and I called you a blasphemer, you would be beyond hurt.
joe rogan
Same as Christian.
ayaan hirsi ali
Because it's, you know, there's a capital punishment on that, by the way.
So, you've done something awful and sinful and horrible.
And that's how they react to being called out.
joe rogan
That's also why they want to cancel people.
It's their version of how you would treat an apostate.
It's their version of how you would treat someone who's a blasphemer.
ayaan hirsi ali
I picked up Kendi's book and started reading through it and, you know, my first reaction to it is, this stuff is published, it's weird.
joe rogan
Which book?
ayaan hirsi ali
The one, gosh, what is it called?
The latest one.
joe rogan
Who's book?
ayaan hirsi ali
Ibram X. Kendi.
joe rogan
Oh, I don't know the title of that book.
ayaan hirsi ali
So it's Black, How to Be an Antiracist.
joe rogan
How to be an anti-racist.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah.
And so when you go through the introduction, you go to chapter one, it says, definition, it has the word racist.
And then it uses the word racist in a sentence to define racist.
And then how to be anti-racist.
So the word is in bold letters.
And the same word is used to define what it's supposed to be defining.
You couldn't get away with this in, what, sixth grade, seventh grade?
You'd be told that's not how it works.
The word that you are defining is in bold and then you use other words to explain what it means.
So we are on that level where even it's almost like a prayer book and there's a little bit of autobiography here and a bit of scholarship there, but not scholarship the way I recognize scholarship.
None of it is there.
I mean, I wrote an autobiography, but the autobiography was an autobiography.
This is my story.
It's as subjective as it gets.
I'm not writing a book for...
I'm not writing a manual for how people should look at Somalia or Holland or anywhere I've been or come to any way of thinking.
This is just a story of who I am and how I came to be where I am.
But the book he's writing is like a manual for all of us on how to think about race, racism, non-racist, anti-racist.
And that the whole thing, it's just weird.
joe rogan
There was years ago where people were recognizing this trend in college and everyone was saying, oh, just relax.
It's a few people in some liberal arts schools.
It's not that big a deal.
But now they're seeing that this is moving into the tech space.
This is moving into government now.
This is affecting policy.
The chickens are coming home to roost.
It's actually becoming something that, like when you saw Evergreen College, what happened with Brett Weinstein up there, and people were like, why are you focusing on this?
Why is this a big deal?
I'm like, these people are going to leave that college, and they're going to get jobs.
They're going to enter the workforce, and they believe they're right.
And they are religious practitioners of woke.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes, and they're in nuclear plants and they're in all sorts of spaces where someone was telling me last night it took him, he's in the aerospace space, and he said it took him eight months to find someone to hire because HR insists that he finds someone from a diverse group.
They're all kidding themselves because they all know that teeny tiny group of engineers who do that sort of work are not diverse.
So basically he was forced to find someone who doesn't exist for eight months.
joe rogan
It's not a meritocracy.
ayaan hirsi ali
But if we carry on doing that, this guy was patient for eight months and the company Really wanted to go with it.
And again, I think if you want a diversification through gender, race, put your money where your mouth is.
Invest in it.
See to it that a generation from now, American boardrooms look different because you invested money and time and effort in that.
But to come around in 2021 and say, give me diversity like that, you're not going to get it.
Be honest about it.
But you can't because you're saying the people...
People who graduated from colleges like Evergreen are now in the workforce and they want diversity now because for them it's an article of faith.
It's not about improving society.
joe rogan
Well, it's also why they're so adamant about adherence to their policies and rules.
It's the same way very religious people are.
They'll scream at you and yell at you and force violence on you because they want you to comply.
They can't debate it.
It's not logical.
What they're saying is not logical.
It doesn't make sense.
So they have to scream at you.
They have to try to chastise you.
They try to have to figure out how to box you into some horrible definition so that you'll comply.
It's about power.
And that's what this is.
ayaan hirsi ali
It is about power.
And I think there's only one way to...
To stop it, because ideally what we want is to stop it, and that is to make sure that they don't get anywhere near power, and that we are more powerful by speaking out, explaining, making things explicit, and especially by mocking them.
One thing that I find effective is to show them how ridiculous they are and how ridiculous they come across.
And in the beginning, honestly, people around me and myself, we just laughed at this stuff.
You know, you hear yet another story about microaggressions and safe spaces and you name it.
It is now a whole vocabulary of what they say, what they do, what they want and how they want to get to power.
And we used to mock them.
joe rogan
That shit's real now.
ayaan hirsi ali
Now it's real.
But using all the means, peaceful means, I don't believe in violence, all the useful means that we use, I think mocking them, humor has to come back.
They have to be made fun of.
joe rogan
Okay.
I'll talk to my people.
Thank you, Ayan.
That was a really very fun and interesting conversation and very enlightening.
ayaan hirsi ali
Thank you, Joe.
Thank you so much for having me.
joe rogan
And thank you for telling everyone your story because it's pretty wild and you're a brave human being.
I appreciate you.
ayaan hirsi ali
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
joe rogan
My pleasure.
And your book is Prey.
It's out now.
P-R-E-Y. It's out now.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes.
joe rogan
Do you have an audio version of it as well?
ayaan hirsi ali
Yes, there's an audio version.
joe rogan
Do you read it?
ayaan hirsi ali
I'm reading it.
Okay, excellent.
So Prey, I'm reading it, P-R-E-Y, and I have a podcast.
You are a great example, so I've started podcasting as well, and I have a website.
What is your podcast called?
It's Ayan Hirsi Ali.
unidentified
Okay.
ayaan hirsi ali
Yeah, and the website is also Ayan Hirsi Ali.
joe rogan
Alright, thank you very much.
ayaan hirsi ali
Thank you very much.
unidentified
Bye everybody.
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