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Feb. 22, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:36:22

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #73

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	Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Monday the 22nd of February.
	I'm joined by Callum, and today we're going to be talking about how the New York Times has come out apparently unironically against critical thinking, how free speech is a threat to the left, And what was the last thing we were going to do?
	It was crazy.
	Be less white.
	Oh yeah, that was right.
	Coca-Cola saying they wanted everyone to be less white.
	Whatever that's supposed to mean.
	But I guess we'll find out.
	But before we do that, on Lotus.com, we have an absolutely excellent article that's kind of a follow-up to the subject we were covering the other day, which was Macron's war on Islamo-leftism.
	He has decided that Islamo-leftism is a, quote, Anglo-Saxon philosophy that has come from America and invaded France.
	And thankfully, we have brilliant guest contributors such as Dr.
	John Tangney.
	Sorry, Dr.
	Tangley, for calling you doctor.
	I know he doesn't like it, but I think it's important to note that he is a PhD in Renaissance Literature, and so he knows quite a lot about this subject.
	And he has given us an amazingly concise and readable explanation of how 1970s French intellectualism has gone through the American academic system and has now come back home to roost in France, as we were briefly touching on in the podcast.
	And so it's a really great article.
	It's on Lotasease.com now.
	It's free.
	It's not a premium one, even though this definitely would have been worthy of being premium.
	But this seemed like such a useful and important topic that it was worth making sure that it was outside of the paywall.
	But otherwise, of course, you can support us by going to Lotasease.com and signing up, becoming a premium member, getting access to all of the amazing premium content we have.
	We have other parts, other articles from John Tangney and various other academics, as well as our own premium podcast, book clubs, loads of great stuff.
	Anyway, let's talk about the New York Times and critical thinking.
	This is quite an amazing article.
	I honestly am surprised.
	I mean, now, there's a part of me that wants to ascribe some kind of knowledgeable intent to what's being said, but there's another part of me that thinks perhaps, just perhaps, they don't really know the implications of what they're saying.
	So I think that...
	Excuse me.
	It's really worth covering what is being suggested here in some detail.
	Because this is...
	Just read the title.
	Yeah, the title for anyone just listening on Apple or iTunes or wherever else is Don't Go Down the Rabbit Hole.
	Critical thinking as we're taught to do it isn't helping in the fight against misinformation by Charlie Warzel.
	I mean, that's mad, isn't it?
	Thinking about things is bad.
	Yes.
	And what this is, is essentially a handbook for online fact-checking, which I think...
	Which involves no critical thinking.
	Which explicitly tries to resist the idea of critical thinking, because you might go down a rabbit hole and learn something that is outside of the pre-approved narrative.
	And so it's like, right, okay.
	Essentially what this is, is a method for resisting paradigm shifts.
	Because in any kind of intellectual endeavour, you have a way of thinking about things upon which the endeavour is performed.
	And that is going to be an imperfect method, and so any imperfections will reveal themselves over many numerous iterations in sort of Bayesian fashion, and eventually you'll have enough people on the outside of the paradigm To say, there are things about this paradigm that need changing.
	In fact, we have a new paradigm that not only incorporates the old one, but also this new information that isn't being considered.
	And this is a handbook of saying, well, look, what you can do is just never get to the point of encountering new information that challenged the dominant paradigm.
	And maybe you should do that.
	It's like the handbook for being an intellectual serf is what this is, right?
	So this references several academics.
	One of them is a Michael Caulfield, who apparently has an odd request.
	Stop overthinking what you see online.
	He's a digital literacy expert at Washington State University, Vancouver, which is an interesting title because I am also a digital literacy expert.
	I've been on the internet for many, many years, and I'm literate in using the internet, and therefore I'm an expert at it.
	You are too.
	In fact, almost everyone who has been born after the year 2000 is probably innately a digital literacy expert.
	So it's good that Mr.
	Caulfield has taken it upon himself to explain to us what we already know.
	He says that at this very moment, more people are fighting for the opportunity to lie to you than perhaps at any other point in human history.
	As if fake news is new, which is not.
	But the presupposition is anything outside of the ordained narrative...
	Is a lie.
	Is someone trying to misinform you?
	He says, we're taught that in order to protect ourselves from bad information, we need to deeply engage with the stuff that washes up in front of us.
	You'll get imperfect information and then use reasoning to fix that somehow, but in reality, that strategy can completely backfire.
	And as New York Times say, in other words, resist the lure of rabbit holes in part by reimagining media literacy for the internet hellscape we occupy.
	Stay blue pills and know only the official narrative on any subject.
	That's what's being told to us.
	Would the people in power ever lie to you?
	Would they ever mislead you?
	Of course they wouldn't.
	Of course they wouldn't.
	As they say, it's often counterproductive to engage directly with content from an unknown source.
	And people can be led astray by false information.
	In influence by the research of Sam Weinberg, a professor at Stanford, and Sarah McGrew, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Mr.
	Caulfield argued that the best way to learn about a source of information is to leave it and look elsewhere.
	This is a concept called lateral reading.
	What do you make of that, Callum?
	The best way to learn about something is to not look at it, but instead hear what we have to say about it.
	I mean, as anyone who operates online, that's the worst thing possible you can do.
	I mean, endlessly hear about what people say about another person, as if that's ever going to be accurate.
	Yeah, it's the worst possible way of learning about something.
	Lateral reading, it's an amazing term for received information as well.
	It is because you are depending on an authority source that you are trusting as being an authority on the information that they are giving to you.
	Which means that you have to know that that person is not only competent, but also doesn't have a malicious intent to try and deceive you or mislead you or anything like this.
	But literally, do not become knowledgeable on a subject.
	Allow someone who claims to be knowledgeable on it to tell you what they want you to know.
	That's amazing, isn't it?
	Because, like, how do you know that person is knowledgeable?
	If you haven't read the subject yourself, how do you know?
	They know what they're talking about.
	They could be making anything up, could they not?
	Which they do.
	They've got the official credentials, haven't they?
	Exactly.
	It's all an appeal to authority.
	The great thing about this is the whole thing is couched in the idea that you can't trust your own understanding of something.
	Like, surely me reading the thing would give me the best knowledge of what the thing is, except no.
	And this comes to a problem of perception.
	So there's quite a long-running discussion in philosophy about how we know what we know, and this is all informed by the paradigm in which we're in.
	And so the things that we perceive are informed by our preconceived ideas of the intellectual landscape already in.
	So, I mean, there's an example of, in Western thought, In Western science, the fact that the heavens move was actually sort of prohibited ideologically by the church and by the worldview presented by the Bible.
	So the idea is that the earth is the center of the universe and the heavens are static, which actually isn't found in like Chinese astronomy because they didn't have that particular view.
	And so they, many centuries before the West, realized by just looking at certain phenomena that actually the heavens are moving.
	And because it wasn't Like, verboten for them to say it.
	They just incorporated it into their worldview of the universe.
	And it took Western scientists, or proto-scientists, centuries to actually come to the conclusion, actually, God, the heavens are moving.
	And then I think it was Galileo who pointed this out, and obviously he was then persecuted for being a heretic.
	And it was like, okay, well, this is a really great example of how perception of the world is directly informed by your own paradigm and can hold back scientific advancement just because you're not allowed to look in certain areas.
	So you just don't look.
	You just don't think to look.
	I mean, the Catholic Church is a perfect example of that, talking about it.
	The fact that the Bibles all used to be in Latin, and then the idea that it should be in the native tongue so the native people could read it was verboten.
	And as soon as they did, they realized that the priests were lying to them about things.
	Don't learn Latin.
	Let us tell you what to think.
	Anyway, yeah.
	So, for instance, imagine you were to visit Stormfront, a white supremacist messaging board.
	As you do.
	I mean...
	Do people know about this place?
	Is it just something that's just in the common cultural zeitgeist?
	Yeah, I went to the BBC, then I went to the Telegraph, then I went to Stormfront.
	And then the Guardian.
	Yeah, and then the Guardian.
	Natural regression.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Other way around, really.
	Guardian, then Stormfront.
	But that's the thing.
	You're promoting now this white supremacist website.
	I mean, I've never even seen...
	There's a device, okay.
	Let's say I want to go to Stormfront and read what the Neo-Nazis have to actually say.
	Even though you may see through the horrible rhetoric, at the end of the day, you give that place many minutes of your time.
	Even with good intentions, you run the risk of misunderstanding something.
	Because Stormfront users are way better at propaganda than you, you won't get less racist by reading Stormfront critically, but you might be overloaded by information and underwhelmed.
	Overwhelmed, sorry.
	So the idea that, I mean, you run the risk of misunderstanding something, that's a risk you run at all times, in all places, whenever you're attempting to understand anything.
	So the only way to avoid the risk of misunderstanding something is to avoid attempts at understanding anything.
	As in just, again, receive the information from the approved sources.
	And you will have no problem understanding anything.
	Because you won't be.
	You'll just be given bullet point updates and sort of the NPC script.
	And this is a way of trying to get people to commit to that.
	I just love some of the points, though.
	If you're giving them minutes of your time, as if that's bad.
	Like, if I want to read socialist literature...
	I mean, that's probably a problem, yeah.
	The idea that even reading it, even giving it the time of day, is evil in and of itself, like you're agreeing with the neo-Nazis here.
	Without engagement with you by the verboten text, how else could they do it?
	I mean, you'll never run the risk of misunderstanding if you never try to understand.
	I suppose so.
	Checkmate.
	That's literally what he's saying, though.
	The goal of disinformation is to capture attention, and critical thinking is deep attention.
	People learn to think critically by focusing on something and contemplating it deeply to follow the information's logic and the inconsistencies.
	And this is what he's saying here, or what they're saying here.
	People learn to think critically by focusing on something and contemplating it deeply to follow the information's logic and the inconsistencies.
	We could really just describe that as understanding.
	That's what it's to understand something.
	And so the goal of disinformation is understanding.
	It's interesting, isn't it?
	It's a weird way of putting it.
	It's what they're teasing out for us from their view.
	That the human mindset is a liability in an attention economy.
	Your view of the world is a liability.
	Is limited by me being a human?
	How else am I meant to interact with information?
	The natural human mindset is a liability and intention economy.
	As in, there's a perfect narrative that serves power in this regard, and disinformation might cause understanding, and that's a liability!
	So you need to train yourself out of it.
	It allows grifters, conspiracy theorists, trolls and savvy attention hijackers to take advantage of us and steal our focus.
	Whenever you give your attention to a bad actor, you allow them to steal your attention from better treatments of an issue and give them the opportunity to warp your perspective.
	Your mind may be changed by information that allows you to have a better understanding of what you're being told.
	But I mean, even if I want to take him charitably there, he's saying sort of, you're human, you're subject to clickbait or propaganda style things instead of long explanations.
	Well, okay, sure.
	But what if I actually just want to look at it?
	Surely that's up to me.
	But you risk polluting your own thought process.
	With disinformation.
	That's kind of the point.
	Yeah.
	That's kind of the point.
	That's what intellectual growth is, yeah.
	This is very much end of history thinking here, as in there will be.
	And what this kind of is, is like the...
	You know how we were talking about all of the narratives are harmonizing into one, right?
	And it's the kind of grand establishment mega-narrative.
	It's the narrative to contain all other narratives.
	And what it says at its most simple is...
	Anything we didn't say is wrong, right?
	And so if it comes from us, it's right.
	It's approved.
	You can believe it.
	You can trust it because it's authority and we said it's correct.
	And anything we didn't say is an opportunity to warp your perspective, is a way of disinformation, helping you understand the subject.
	You don't want to understand the subject.
	You want to be correct.
	And being correct is now a matter of power.
	It's not a matter of understanding.
	And what this is is the essence of totalitarianism.
	Everything we didn't say is wrong is the view of totalitarianism.
	One way to combat this dynamic is to change how we teach media literacy.
	Internet users need to learn that our attention is a scarce commodity to be spent wisely.
	Which is weird, because that sounds to me like they're saying, become someone who is unable to commit time to deep research and study.
	I mean, why would I want that?
	In 2016, Mr.
	Caulfield met Mr.
	Weinberg, who suggested modeling the process after the way professional fact checkers assess information.
	Mr.
	Caulfield refined the practice into four simple principles.
	These are called SIFT. Isn't that a nice acronym?
	SIFT through that information, right?
	So the first one is STOP. The second one is investigate the source, which means interrogate the source for political bias.
	The third one is find better coverage, which means find coverage that harmonizes with the mega narrative.
	And the fourth one is trace claims, quotes and media to the original context, which is what we've just been advised against doing.
	We aren't supposed to read the original sources because that might corrupt us or steal our attention, I thought.
	If this is not a claim where I have depth or understanding, then I won't stop for a second before going further than just investigate the source, said Caulfield.
	He copied Mr.
	Kennedy's name.
	They're referring to a conspiracy theorist, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, as they describe the person.
	Mr.
	Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I believe.
	He put it into Instagram, popped up in Google, and he said, look how fast that is.
	He told me he's counted the seconds out loud.
	In 15 seconds, he navigated to Wikipedia and scrolled through the introductory section of the page, highlighting with his cursor the last sentence, which read that Mr.
	Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist.
	Wikipedia is truth.
	Wasn't that easy?
	This is the exact opposite of what any educational institution would advise you.
	Yes, it is.
	Or at least anyone that's still sane, I suppose.
	Unless, of course, you control the mega-narrative and Wikipedia is a propaganda piece, an outlet, a megaphone for that narrative.
	If Wikipedia is the source of truth, then the question is who's controlling the narratives on Wikipedia?
	Is Robert F. Kennedy the best unbiased source for information on a vaccine?
	I'd argue no.
	And that's good enough to know that we should probably just move on.
	I have a wager even his supporters probably think no.
	They probably think that he's probably this guy I've just met is not the best source on vaccines.
	But they might find what he has to say interesting.
	And that's up to them, surely.
	And he might be right.
	The question of bias is often used as an excuse to essentially call someone wrong without actually pointing out why they're wrong.
	Because fundamentally, they know that bias is a facet of human life.
	I mean, there's not really any such thing as an unbiased source on a vaccine, right?
	If you're committed to promoting it or you're committed to opposing it, you're going to have a bias in either way because you've put effort and time and energy and you probably Financially incentivized into one of these directions.
	And even if you're not in that, you've got an interest in whether you take a vaccine or not.
	You know, is the vaccine going to be good for your health?
	Is it going to protect you from a disease?
	Does it have any side effects?
	You know, you as a person who would take a vaccine, you have a bias there too.
	And this is true for anything.
	It's not just vaccines.
	True for anything.
	It's a topic in existence.
	Exactly.
	This is just the example they gave.
	And so the idea that there's like, oh, well, is he the most unbiased source?
	Well, no, but it's kind of hard to find a source that's unbiased.
	But unbiased doesn't mean factually inaccurate.
	What we're looking for is, would it be the most factually accurate source of information on a vaccine?
	And, well, maybe it is.
	Maybe it's not.
	I don't know.
	I don't know who Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	is.
	But the point is, we don't need to know because we've already established that he's a conspiracy theorist because Wikipedia told us so.
	And we don't listen to those people because the establishment, the power, have told us that that's wrong.
	So we're just going to carry on and he's wrong about everything.
	I mean, this is great advertising for the New York Times.
	Like, what does our journalism consist of?
	Reading Wikipedia articles.
	Yeah, exactly.
	We get into that, in fact.
	Like, if that's where it starts and stops...
	Well, that's actually something he brings up.
	He probed deeper into the method to find better coverage by copying the main claim in Mr.
	Kennedy's post and pasting it into a Google search.
	The first two results that came up from France's Agent Press' Fact Check website and the National Institutes of Health, quick searches showed a pattern.
	Mr.
	Kennedy's claims were outside of the consensus, a sign they were motivated by something other than science.
	That's not how science works.
	Exactly.
	Science is not based on consensus.
	Well, it's based on consensus in regards to the evidence, let's say, but it is not absolute ever.
	It never can be because it wouldn't make any sense.
	It's not even based on consensus to the evidence.
	Like we were speaking about the paradigms a minute ago, both the Catholics and the Chinese would look at the stars and see the same thing.
	They'd have the same evidence, but take different interpretations because of their own lenses, their own paradigms.
	Form the way that they interpret the evidence.
	And so it's not even that simple.
	And this goes to a theory by Kuhn about how scientific paradigms work.
	And I think this theory probably is expandable to any kind of intellectual paradigm at all.
	Certain things simply can't be seen within certain paradigms.
	And you don't actually know what's going to lead on to a paradigm shift.
	Because there were...
	There was a material that was hypothesized called phlogiston, and this was meant to be some sort of liquidy gas that would be apparent when, I don't know, you put acid on zinc or something like this, and it was a load of magical, well not magical, but scientific properties were ascribed to this substance.
	And lots of people did various experiments based on the idea that this substance existed.
	But the thing is, this substance didn't exist.
	But the results of those experiments produced information about things that we now use today.
	And so, despite the fact that it was a false paradigm, if it wasn't for this false paradigm, we wouldn't be in what we believe to be a more accurate paradigm now.
	So the point is, consensus actually means nothing.
	People can have a complete and almost universal consensus on An opinion that's totally wrong.
	The Catholic Church with the heavens moving, the existence of phlogiston as a material that influences the world.
	These things are not true, but they were consensus opinions.
	And it was people outside of the consensus that brought us into the paradigm that we're in now, where we believe that those things weren't true because the evidence doesn't support it.
	And essentially what they're saying is our paradigm is truth.
	Which in and of itself is a very dogmatic and anti-scientific worldview.
	It's unbelievably arrogant.
	The SIFT method and the instructional teaching unit that accompanies it have been picked up by dozens of universities across the country and some Canadian high schools.
	Good news, your kids are going to be taught this.
	And what's potentially revolutionary about SIFT is it focuses on making quick judgements.
	A SIFT fact check should take 30, 60, 90 seconds to evaluate a piece of content.
	So keeping people in a state of momentary suspense, never engaging with anything deeply other than with a sort of oppositional position to check its relative position against the mega narrative.
	So it's effectively turning people into autonomous gatekeepers for this narrative.
	And I think that's just amazing that they come out with this and that people aren't supposed to be aware of that's what's happening and that's what they're trying to promote.
	The four steps are based on the premise that you often make a better decision with less information than you do with more.
	Do you agree with that?
	John's already laughing in the corner.
	Do you agree with that in any way, shape, or form?
	Why the hell should I? Exactly.
	Like, when, when, has anyone made a better decision with less information than more?
	How does that work?
	I mean, if you're lucky, I guess.
	We should be relying on luck.
	New frontiers of science are being pushed here.
	This is like the witch theory from that.
	What is it?
	What university was that?
	She was like, you can't explain African science, which is blazed on...
	It was a South African university.
	How does the shaman call the lightning?
	Yeah.
	But that's the thing.
	How can you make a better decision with less information?
	I mean, like, it just doesn't make sense on any particular level.
	Like, prudence, you know, just general day-to-day decision-making, like, good decision-making requires practical wisdom, but that means you have to have a good knowledge of your environment and what's going on within it.
	More knowledge on what's going on around you will enable you to make more informed decisions, which we would call better decisions.
	But I suppose it depends on what you mean by better.
	If better means more in line with the mega-narrative, then sure, I mean, you know, less information might be great.
	In fact, you don't want people to have any information, really, which is presumably the purpose of this piece.
	Kind of scary, though, isn't it?
	It's a very brave new world to me.
	Literally, you should not think about things.
	Let us do the thinking for you.
	This goes in line with also a couple of topics we've covered.
	The YouTubers being accused of abominable thinking.
	The owl being visited for the police to check on his thinking.
	You would have thought this kind of stuff would...
	We always talked in terms of hate or this kind of speech or something.
	I never thought we'd actually get into the realm of talking about thinking being evil.
	But that's where we are now, I guess.
	That's where the New York Times is now.
	By the point of the 2020s, this is where we're going.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Absolute clown decade.
	Think crimes now.
	We are in think crimes.
	Spending 15 minutes to determine a single fact in order to decipher a tweet or piece of news coming from a source you've never seen before will often leave you more confused than you were before.
	Finding out the information about something will leave you confused.
	And so we, the world controllers, will just hand down the information you need.
	We'll take away those inconvenient books that had concepts in that will just leave you confused, and we will hand you down the narrative that you need.
	No more thinking required.
	This actually reminds me of the NPC meme.
	Yeah.
	Because I don't know if you've seen the videos, like, when they read something that they don't understand.
	See the little, like, wheel turning?
	Yeah.
	And they leave you confosed.
	That's what that is?
	That's what that is.
	Before you click and realize they're telling you something is a lie.
	It's like they're talking to Grandpa or something.
	Don't tell Grandpa about the internet because it'll just be confusing to him because it's outside of his world and he doesn't understand it.
	I don't want that.
	That's awful.
	The question we want students asking is, is this a good source for this purpose or could I find something better relatively quickly?
	Mr.
	Caulfield said, I've seen in the classroom where a student finds a great answer in three minutes but then keeps going and ends up won over by bad information.
	What?
	I'd love to see the example he says.
	Me too.
	But I find it really...
	Bad information is to give it a kind of moral dimension.
	This immoral information.
	This disinformation that will give you knowledge about a subject because you looked at the primary source rather than look at the authority.
	You should avoid that.
	Okay.
	That's what we're encouraging students to do.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's deeply concerning, in my view.
	I mean, you don't want to get won over by bad information, do you?
	I don't know, do I? Anyway...
	They say, we've been trained to think that Googling or just fact-checking one resource we trust is almost like cheating.
	But when people search Google, the best results may not always be first, but the good information is usually near the top.
	Often when you see a patent, just take the first Google result you get.
	It'll be something that supports the mega narrative.
	You can trust it.
	It's like cheating, but it's not.
	I mean, we know from the whistleblowers at Google, I mean, endless numbers of them now, that Google does influence their search results in different ways to promote narratives that they promote.
	I mean, even their vice president said this.
	He came to parliament and they were grilling him about this, that, and the other.
	And he says, no, no, no, we prioritize, what was it, the promotion of...
	Homosexual LGBT issues or something like this.
	I'll have to get the link to show you it.
	Yeah, but they manipulate the search engine.
	But he openly sent this to the parliament in regards to them saying, why when I search straight couples do you end up with a bunch of gay people?
	It was like, well...
	You know, kind of...
	That's the first result.
	A straight white couple is two gay men.
	But the information you need is usually in the top.
	Often, you see a pattern in the links of a consensus that's been formed.
	But deeper into the process, it often gets weirder.
	It's important to know when to stop.
	Literally, stop thinking, know your limits.
	This is like a Harry Enfield sketch.
	You have too much to think, literally.
	But again, it'll confuse you.
	It gets weird.
	You don't need to know any of these things.
	Let us, the approved thinkers, think this for you.
	You can just take the narrative.
	It's like, okay, this is just a way of creating sheep.
	And the sheepdogs will bark at them as they go near the edge, and they'll be funneled in to whatever field they're supposed to be going into.
	Stop at the limits of the mega-narrative, because, you know...
	It gets weird.
	You don't want to be weird, do you?
	Again, all this moral, judgmentational language.
	Why are you talking like this?
	Christina Ladham, an assistant political science professor at Nevada University, has seen the damage firsthand.
	Her students had been reading things without checking sources or looking at fake news.
	It was just uncritical acceptance if it fit with the narrative in their head and complete rejection if it didn't.
	Which is a highly ironic statement because that's exactly what the New York Times is advocating.
	That's what they want.
	Uncritical acceptance.
	Well, this is an article arguing for uncritical acceptance of the mega-narrative.
	The students are confused when I tell them to try and trace something down with a quick Wikipedia search because they've been told not to do it.
	Not for research papers, but if you're trying to find something, find if a site's legitimate or somebody has a history as a conspiracy theorist, then you show them how to follow the page's citation.
	It's quick and effective, which means it's more likely to be used.
	Which is interesting, because what this implies is that Wikipedia wasn't always a tool of the cathedral, right?
	It wasn't always just an avenue to promote the mega-narrative on politics, or on science, or whatever it was.
	But it seems that this has changed.
	So now, it used to be, don't check Wikipedia.
	It's not, you know, verifiable.
	It might be suspicious.
	Who knows?
	You know, you're supposed to do your own critical research.
	And now it's just like, well, Wikipedia is the thing you can trust.
	This will give you all the information you'll ever need.
	That's it.
	I'm sure you've seen, I think it was one of the co-founders of Wikipedia actually came out and said it's now become a vehicle for leftist nonsense.
	Yeah, I remember that.
	It was a couple of years ago, wasn't it?
	Yeah.
	As a journalist who can be a bit of a snob about research methods, it makes me anxious to use this type of advice.
	Use Wikipedia for quick guidance.
	Spend less time torturing yourself with complex primary sources.
	Hang on.
	Like a child.
	Yeah, exactly.
	A part of my brain hears this and reflexively worries that these methods might be exploited by conspiracy theorists.
	I mean, my brain hears this and thinks it might be exploited by tyrants and people who are, well, actual totalitarians who want control of everything that you think, like the New York Times.
	But it seems like snobs like me have it backwards.
	I mean, this is a genuinely incredible commitment to submission to authority on display here.
	Think about YouTube conspiracy theorists or many QAnon or anti-vaccine influencers.
	I mean, I don't, actually.
	I don't spend a lot of time worrying about YouTube conspiracy theorists.
	But their tactic is to flatter viewers while overloading them with three-hour videos laced with debunked claims and pseudoscience, as well as legitimate information.
	The internet offers the illusion of explanatory depth.
	Until 20 seconds ago, you'd never thought about, say, race and IQ, but suddenly somebody is treating you like an expert.
	It's flattering your intellect, so you engage.
	You don't really stand a chance, right?
	The core message here is you're not worthy.
	You don't stand a chance.
	You are not worthy.
	This is beyond you.
	You're actually competent.
	Just do as you're told by the power, right?
	But the thing is, I don't see how explaining something in detail is treating someone like an expert.
	If anything, I would say that's the opposite of treating someone like an expert, because if you're an expert in something, you use shorthand to refer to something, right?
	So I might say, oh, well, the Kuhnian relative hypothesis on paradigm shifts means blah, blah, blah, blah, and you'd be like, well, what the hell is that?
	And so I have to explain, well, the paradigm informs the way you view things, and so you actually have trouble viewing a foreign paradigm.
	And so I've got to explain, because you're not experts.
	You don't know what that is unless you are an expert in that thing.
	And so someone taking three hours to lay out a position to you is what you do to amateurs.
	So it's just not true.
	Anyway, what he described as a kind of informational hubris that is quite difficult to fight, but what SIFT and Mr.
	Caulfield's lessons seem to do is flatter their students in a different way, by reminding us our attention is precious.
	So, manipulating students.
	Oh, they're manipulating them.
	Well, we're going to have to manipulate them too.
	So the goal of SIFT isn't to be an arbiter of truth, but to instill a reflex that asks if something is worth someone's time and attention, and to turn away if not.
	Because the method is less interested in political judgements, and students across the political spectrum are more likely to embrace it.
	By the end of the two-week course, the students are better at finding primary sources for research papers, and in discussion, they're less likely to fall back on motivated reasoning.
	Which is amazing, because all of this is motivated reasoning to protect the mega-narrative.
	We have reached the end of history, this is the truth.
	Right now we are taking the scarcest, most valuable resource we have, our attention, and we're trying to use it to repair a horribly broken information ecosystem.
	We're throwing good money after bad, so we've arrived at the end of history.
	The truth will always come from one place, and that place happens to be Wikipedia, and you don't need to spend any of your time doing anything else other than consulting that.
	This is kind of reminiscent of a piece that was published on Everyday Feminism like five years ago now.
	Now this used to be the sort of source we'd make videos on and just laugh at on the internet, but this has become sort of mainstream.
	Three reasons that it's irrational to demand rationalism and social justice activism.
	What a condemnation of social justice.
	Yes.
	Well, that's the point.
	Like, what a condemnation of...
	Sorry.
	What a condemnation of the New York Times it is to promote Wikipedia as an oracle of truth.
	Like, well, it's the same sort of principle.
	And, I mean, I'm not going to go through this, but, like, this is just hilarious, right?
	And I love some of the quotes here, right?
	The scenario is always the same.
	I say we should abolish prisons, police, and the American settler state.
	Someone tells me I'm irrational.
	I say we need decolonization of land, and someone tells me I'm not being realistic.
	Well, I mean, yeah, they're right.
	Just to tell you.
	And so the criticisms, why it's irrational to say that you should be rational, is that being rational has no inherent value.
	Disagree.
	For many different reasons.
	I mean, if something like inherent value is an empty concept, because all value is subjective.
	So you can't have something that's inherently valuable because you need an agent who desires it to imbue it with value.
	So there's no point saying that something has no inherent value, because by that logic, I mean, everyday feminism has no inherent value.
	So that's a silly thing.
	The next one is, rationalism is a tool made to hurt us.
	Who's us?
	I mean, who thinks that?
	And then the third point is, we are enough without rationalism, which is the opinion of the beasts, I think.
	They also agree that they are enough without rationalism.
	If they don't need rational thought, then what actually separates you from an animal?
	I mean, literally, it was the fact that you were a rational that separated, in Aristotle's view, man from the rest of the animal kingdom.
	So what is it in their point of view that separates them?
	The answer is they don't know.
	But the point is this kind of anti-critical, anti-rational worldview seems to be seeping into mainstream discourse in a major way.
	The everyday feminism one is just, you know, here's the lunatic fringe and they've been banging this drum for years.
	But now the New York Times is literally saying, well, don't go down the rabbit.
	Don't engage in critical thinking.
	You might learn things of which we don't approve and that might change your mind on stuff.
	And you don't want your mind changed, do you?
	And it's like, okay, well, I mean, if you're telling me a lie, then yeah, I do.
	I want to know what the truth is.
	But anyway, that took longer than I expected, but it was just gold.
	Absolute gold.
	Yeah.
	It's pretty fucking...
	I'm finding it hard not to swear at such things.
	This is ridiculous, isn't it?
	Like, don't think.
	Also, by the way, rationalism is now the enemy.
	Okay, leftists.
	Not my position.
	But this is something we've been talking about a lot, which is they keep running up against reality, you know, and they kept battering against it.
	And that's their problem.
	As soon as they run into something that is in the real world, they have to declare that all the real world things are the enemy.
	Yeah.
	And it's easier if you just don't engage with that thing.
	Just think what we want you to think.
	Then you can stay in the ideology.
	Nothing changes.
	Exactly.
	Then the real world doesn't affect you.
	And that can carry on indefinitely, we promise.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, so I wanted to talk about Owen Jones because Owen Jones today did a wonderful little stream about free speech.
	Oh, yeah.
	I think you're going to enjoy this one because I can't get over how he unironically did this and thought this made him look good.
	So for anyone who doesn't know who Owen Jones is, why are we talking about him?
	So Owen Jones, he's been a Guardian columnist for God knows how long now, gets funded by the Guardian to make videos.
	I think they cancelled him after they lost a bunch of funding, so boo-hoo.
	Because I don't respect his journalistic work.
	I don't think it's respectable.
	Well, James O'Brien described him recently as a left-wing propagandist.
	Yeah, I think if he was honest, he'd describe himself as that too.
	He's invited on TV shows endlessly, in the same way Ash Shark or all these people are, because the booking people like them.
	That kind of thing.
	He's friends with them.
	And he's now got his own YouTube channel, he's doing his own podcast, trying to do something during COVID, I guess.
	And it's going well, as you can see from that image.
	I don't think the audience can see it.
	But let's play this first clip.
	So this is Owen Jones, the whole thing is about free speech, and this is his intro to show that he's taking this very seriously.
	So let's play.
	You'll often see images of people who have, on the front pages, ironically, of the Sunday Times Magazine or the Daily Mail with, like, sellotape over their mouths or having gags themselves in the way I just did.
	And I think it's quite a good illustration of this whole discussion we're having today about free speech, because they've voluntarily done it performatively, and they can take it off whenever they want, and they're doing it on the front pages of mass circulation media outlets where they claim to be silenced.
	Being silenced these days, or telling everyone you've been silenced, is the best possible avenue to start the I've Been Silenced tour.
	I mean, we're already off to the retardation here.
	I mean, the idea that someone who's been silenced and then goes to a newspaper and says, hey, I've had my book deal cancelled because of my political opinions.
	I've had my job taken away because of my political opinions, et cetera, et cetera.
	Goes to the newspapers and say, this has happened to me.
	Can you guys make a story out of this?
	This is disgraceful.
	And the newspaper's like, you know, yeah, we're free speech warriors.
	Screw them.
	We're going to run the story and we'll have an image of you with a tape over your mouth.
	And therefore this is somehow wrong or shows that the initial silencing did not happen.
	But does he think there aren't enough examples of people that have been silenced?
	He doesn't believe they exist by the way this livestream went.
	I also love the idea that they can take it off whenever they want.
	What?
	Oh, I'll have my Twitter account back whenever I want then, please.
	Yeah, I'll have my book deal back.
	Oh, wait, I can't get those back.
	Oh, no, those are gone.
	Well, never mind then, I suppose.
	Oh, I guess Owen Jones was wrong then.
	Let's ask Donald Trump.
	Let's see what he's tweeting.
	Also, when we're talking about, he's saying national circulation newspapers as if they also can't be silenced.
	I mean, as this was an issue a couple of months ago, in which Extinction Rebellion went down to the distribution depots of right-wing newspapers and just blocked them all.
	They could not distribute their newspapers because left-wing protesters were like, no, you need to be silenced.
	I was like, okay.
	Unreal.
	This doesn't happen now, I guess.
	I didn't even hear about this.
	You don't remember this?
	No.
	It was the Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Telegraph.
	I think it was their distribution center.
	They just sat around and blocked the trucks so they couldn't go out and deliver their newspapers.
	Unreal.
	So then, well, no one got them.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Yeah, that's where we are.
	Okay.
	So then the next clip I wanted to say here was him talking about that person who says they've been silenced because of the newspaper, and they'll then go on a silencing tour and get themselves more and more exposure.
	Maybe you could start the tour, I don't know, with a front page on the Daily Mail, I've Been Silenced, followed by a follow-up op-ed in the Daily Telegraph about your horrendous silencing, followed by the Today programme, News Night, Question Time, obviously the book deal with the title I've Been Silenced.
	And then you can do your national I've Been Silenced tour all over the country where you tell thousands of people about your silencing.
	If all of those things have been cancelled, Owen, how do I do that?
	If Extinction Rebellion are blocking the paper's deliveries, if the TV shows won't have me on, if the live venues are cancelled or get raided by Antifa like has happened to us, how do I... How does that tour take place?
	Yeah, exactly.
	How do I do any of those things, Owen?
	But even then, let's say leftists don't take issue with that and allow you to have your tour, graciously allow you to have your right to free speech.
	And how does that change what happens?
	Like, you've still lost your job, you've still lost your account, you've still lost whatever.
	You know, the initial silencing in which you are speaking about must surely have happened still.
	Otherwise, what is the toll about?
	But Owen is really complaining here that it wasn't that you were silenced.
	It's that you were not completely silenced.
	Yeah, that it was unsuccessful.
	Yeah.
	We tried to cancel you and only got one or two of your platforms and not all of your platforms.
	So stop complaining.
	You haven't been silenced.
	Like, we were able to take down your YouTube account, your Twitter account, your Facebook account, or whatever, but you still managed to get into a newspaper.
	This is...
	No, you'll see, you're still as free as everyone else.
	Yeah.
	Ridiculous.
	I tried to look into an example of what he was talking about, specifically people saying I've been silenced.
	I couldn't find exactly what he was talking about, but I did find one, which is a Telegraph article, which is titled, I'm Sick of Being Silenced by Social Justice Warriors.
	Yeah, you and me all, I guess.
	Yeah, who isn't?
	Unbearable.
	And this is just like the only title I could find that fits what he's saying.
	And in there, they're talking about Jordan Peterson.
	So Jordan Peterson was given an opportunity to come and talk about divinity at the University of Cambridge.
	Yeah.
	Well, wasn't he given an associate professorship there?
	Something like that.
	And that was taken away from him?
	It was him coming, he would have this, then he would come there as a fellow and talk with the teachers and students about divinity.
	Perfectly reasonable, like the guy's done multiple lectures on the Bible to death.
	Well, yeah, he's an expert.
	He's written a book on Maps of Meaning.
	And they decided that after consultation, well, I say consultation, you know, screeching from the students.
	Screeching from Twitter students.
	Yeah, certain kinds of students.
	That no, this couldn't happen.
	And they took it away.
	And he wasn't allowed to come and do this.
	And Cambridge issued a statement in response after taking this away saying, Cambridge is an inclusive environment and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles.
	There is no place for here for anyone who cannot.
	I don't even know what you believe, Cambridge University.
	Whatever they need to for the day, by the sounds of it.
	Because, I mean, what in him talking about divinity is against your standards?
	Presumably just being anti-woke.
	Militant atheist university Cambridge has decided to de-platform Christian speaker Jordan Peterson.
	So the Students' Union at Cambridge gave a statement as well.
	His work and views are not representative of the student body.
	LAUGHTER As if they're meant to be.
	Who said they were?
	And as such, we do not see his visit as a valuable contribution to the university.
	But one that works in opposition to the principles of the university.
	He wants free speech and open dialogue.
	But think about what they're saying there.
	If a person visiting is not in agreement with the student body, their visit is not valuable.
	Why would you want to hear from people who are just going to give the received mega-narrative from the institution?
	Like, no, we only want that.
	We can't have someone coming here and disagree.
	What is the point of a state-funded university, if that's what it is?
	Absolutely none.
	And this is what Owen Jones is complaining about.
	I mean, this is the type of article where they're saying, you know, I'm being silenced by social justice warriors.
	That still happens.
	Jordan Peterson didn't get his fellowship.
	He didn't get to go there and give his talks about divinity.
	But he's still got a YouTube channel, so that's...
	So he's fine.
	He's never been silenced.
	Yeah, he's never been silenced.
	There's nothing going on there.
	Utter moron.
	And the annoying thing is, is Owen Jones does understand the problem.
	Of course he does.
	And I'm going to play clip three here, which is just him describing the problem.
	The declaration of war by the so-called woke left...
	On free speech, which has turned universities into places where free expression and free debate has been shut down by an intolerant woke mob, necessitating government intervention with a free speech czar in order to enforce free speech on campuses across the country.
	Unfortunately, yes, that appears to be the case.
	He knows what the problem is.
	Yeah, he does.
	I mean, I don't relish the idea that we have to get the government to intervene to protect our rights, but that is what the government's for, so why not use it?
	Like, if it's for anything, it is the protection of natural rights in any liberal society.
	Yes.
	In which case, okay, I mean...
	The socialists are furious, obviously, at that formulation, but yeah.
	What do you mean human rights?
	Your rights come from the government and that's it.
	Yeah, so then the next clip I want to play is just, so him complaining that the real problem here is the right wing.
	They're the ones trying to come from free speech.
	Yeah.
	It's the right wing that's really about cancel culture.
	Everything you just described there, that's not true.
	That's a false narrative pushed by the right.
	And the real problem is that the right wing are trying to come after people's free speech.
	The real threat to freedom of expression and free speech isn't actually coming from the left at all, but from the right, and yes, the government of the day that is in charge.
	Free speech is a legal concept.
	It's a right defined in the universe, the European Convention on Human Rights, it's a right defined in the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
	And all these things say the same thing, which is that...
	The government should not punish you for expressing your opinion, but within reasonable bounds.
	We're in this weird situation where what the government is proposing to do is protect free speech.
	And it's going to do that by expanding the power of the state to tell people what they can and can't say.
	Based libertarians!
	The government issued guidelines to schools saying...
	You're not permitted to use learning materials produced by any extreme organisations.
	And by extreme organisations, we mean a huge range of people, including anyone who criticises capitalism.
	This comes on the back of ministers saying to universities, we're not going to give you any COVID relief unless you're making sure you give a platform to people of whom we approve.
	And then on top of this, they're proposing a law that will allow people who have been no-platformed or discriminated against by being criticised to sue the university that's responsible for that.
	On top of this, the government has bias training.
	You see in universities subjects like humanities having their funding eliminated.
	Arts, despite being a highly profitable sector, having its public funding eliminated.
	And I think all of this is part of the same thing.
	So he writes for Bellingcat, coincidentally.
	Oh, that's interesting.
	So this is one of his guests.
	Hang on a second.
	There's a lot there to unpack.
	Yeah, he's completely wrong about almost everything that we say.
	I love that the right is the threat to free speech.
	I'll give over.
	The right's the only people doing anything against free speech.
	But the idea that free speech is just a legal principle is amazing.
	Because it's not.
	I mean, it's a moral principle.
	It fundamentally has been, I mean, like Marcus Aurelius, in fact, the book club about his meditations, he talks about the importance of free speech in that.
	This is a 2,000 or 3,000 year old concept because it appears to be part of our natural rights.
	So the idea that, oh, it's just a legal principle.
	No, it's just wrong.
	Yeah, I mean, it's absurdly wrong.
	I mean, the fact that he's quoting the UN and the EU for their definitions of free speech, I mean, tell you immediately, this man knows nothing what he's talking about.
	Because you would not do that if you wanted to talk about the concept.
	You would talk about the liberal traditions.
	You would talk about, like, On Liberty arguing about it.
	You would talk about Aria Pagatica, things like this.
	You would not go to, you know, these globalist institutions to define free speech in both of these instances.
	They say you have the right to free speech, except if it violates this, this, this, this, this.
	And this, this, this, this is an unenviable list of things in which, under any circumstances, we can take it away.
	Morals, for example, in the EU one.
	What?
	If it offends morals, we can delete your free speech.
	Yeah, that's something worth citing, ever.
	Amazing.
	And then he says that the government wants to introduce this free speech star to make sure that there are things that you can and cannot say.
	That's just a lie.
	Like, they're not there to tell you, you can't say this.
	They're there to say, you can't deplatform that man.
	Yeah.
	That's it.
	In fact, the purpose is so you can say things.
	Yes, it is not to cannot.
	Anyway, they also say they have guidelines for stopping people using materials that criticize capitalism.
	This is just a lie.
	We've covered this, I think, a while back.
	So the government brought out guidelines for schools.
	So we're not talking about universities.
	We're not talking about adults.
	We're talking about children.
	And it says that if you have materials, they have to be non-extremist, blah, blah, blah.
	And it is quite sensible the way they defined it.
	They defined it as basically anything who has a worldview about overthrowing the fundamental parts of the British state.
	Don't teach revolution.
	Anti-democracy movements.
	Don't use materials that promote that sort of thing.
	Don't teach religious extremist movements who advocate for theocracy.
	Don't do that.
	And then, you know, communism.
	I mean, radical communism.
	Do not use materials from that sector.
	That's fine.
	Totally reasonable.
	I assume you're not going to use Nazi ones or anarchist ones, you know, just things that are just sensible and liberal and centrist.
	Yeah, I mean, you want to avoid these things anyway, so that's fine by me.
	I mean, it's a state-funded university.
	You want to keep these things non-partisan.
	You can do anything there.
	It's just don't overthrow the state in which you exist, at least.
	When you get to university...
	Small things, just small things.
	Yeah, because we're dealing with children here.
	That's the neat part.
	So then he says that universities want to give COVID relief depending on to platform conservatives.
	They are getting state funding to run.
	So, I mean, they have a duty to uphold free speech, surely.
	And then you can sue a university if they de-platform you.
	Who cares?
	That's a good thing.
	And then if the government doesn't fund unconscious bias changing or humanities in the arts, that's them de-platforming free speech.
	Oh, dear.
	If the government doesn't fund me, you know, if they don't fund my YouTube channel, they're de-platforming me.
	What a stupid thing to say.
	I thought we'd agree that de-platforming is good, Owen.
	Yeah, apparently not, I guess.
	So they then go on to complain about if we have a conservative government, therefore anything the government does must be some kind of wrong thing.
	And then they talk about the culture war being waged by this conservative government.
	So conservative ministers saying something about the flag or saying something about Royal Britannia or something like this.
	And I want to play this clip here.
	So they're just talking about culture war.
	You've got kind of the propaganda end, which is silly cultural skirmishes about the flag, about British fish, the kind of Brexit-related propaganda culture war, which I think is just indulgence and frippery and distraction.
	But there's a far more serious part of it.
	It's kind of the front line of the culture war.
	Which is very impactful and which has an agenda which is to forestall the progress of sort of social justice movements.
	And the second thing is to kind of slowly make the environment more hostile towards them as well.
	So it's a popular opinion changing exercise and it's very dangerous because the right has so many resources.
	It's in government, it's overwhelmingly amplified in the media, and with a kind of sustained assault against Black Lives Matter, against students, against trans or kind of gender-related issues, all the issues that are or belong or have a home on the left,
	And that are designed or intend to promote equality are targeted at this kind of popular culture stigmatization by the government.
	I think that's very, very dangerous because it does two things.
	It sets up right-wing parties, Conservative Party, for re-election in the next election cycle.
	And the second thing is it casts suspicion and doubt on all these movements before they've even started.
	So before people even listen to what Black Lives Matter has to say, for example, they have heard and seen and read so many things about the movement being Marxist and being violent that there is a kind of ready-made suspicion there.
	So if you learn the facts, if you go down the rabbit hole, you'll find out that Black Lives Matter is a bunch of communists who hate white people and want to overthrow capitalism and abolish the police.
	And we don't want you having that presupposition about Black Lives Matter because you might think we're crazy.
	I mean, you'll notice here we're talking about conservative ministers, so politicians, people who are elected and party political.
	Them campaigning on an issue is somehow, you know, a tack on free speech because what they're engaging in is trying to convince the public that leftism is bad, essentially.
	I mean, she even says here...
	And we felt personally attacked by that.
	Yeah, the culture wars they're engaging in are there to stall social justice movements.
	Well, thank God for that.
	I wish!
	But also, they're allowed to.
	They're private citizens.
	They're politicians.
	Why should they not?
	And they're also making their environment hostile for SJWs.
	Good.
	And they're also engaging in changing popular opinion, and that's dangerous.
	Like, it's dangerous to change popular opinion.
	Well, against them, because they might find themselves with nobody supporting them, with nobody thinking that they're doing the right thing.
	They might be ignored...
	It's certainly dangerous against leftism, I suppose.
	I don't know what else to do with that.
	That's a massive danger to leftism.
	And also it sets them up for re-election.
	It's like, well, sorry, they're politicians.
	What else do you think they're going to do with their time?
	And casting doubt on a BLM. Good, good.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	I mean, showing the videos, showing their own propaganda, saying, you know, we want wealth, degree, distribution, the destruction of the nuclear family.
	It's killed dozens of people.
	It's killed dozens of people.
	It wants to destroy the family.
	It wants to overthrow capitalism.
	It's Marxist.
	Exactly.
	It's literally inherently revolutionary.
	And I'm not for revolution.
	So, end of story.
	And I'm going to play a clip here of her trying to castigate how those free speech warriors are such a bunch of...
	They're claiming victimhood, even though nothing's happening to them.
	And I want you to just, when you're listening to this, think of...
	But my Soros check didn't clear this month.
	Think of BLM the whole time she's speaking.
	So let's play the next one.
	So it's very important for dominant forces to project themselves as weak.
	This is like one of the main things that happen when a certain political ideology becomes really powerful.
	The only way to sustain its power is to pretend that there is A kind of incipient assault or threat to it all the time.
	For example, with Brexit, when there was a vote where Brexiteers won, they had to frame their victory as fragile and prone to being overturned all the time because that's the only way they could maintain momentum behind it.
	I call it victim claiming.
	So in order to maintain your dominance, you have to steal victimhood from people who have legitimate privileges.
	From us, the real victims.
	And claim it as your own.
	So that's the only way really to maintain this sense of threat, to maintain this sense of um uh precarity is if you convince yourself i think these people really believe it i think these people who are you know at the helm of extremely popular widely circulating uh newspapers really do believe that they are uh in a minority because if they stop believing that then they get complacent so the only way to kind of keep creating a sense of moral panic
	keep creating a sense of threat keep people voting for you and buy your newspapers and kind of Rushing towards what you have to sell is to tell them that their position is consistently under threat by people that are very weak, that have no political capital, that have no actual capital.
	And so it's a trick that's not just meant to undermine certain groups.
	It's meant to maintain momentum and maintain support for right-wing causes.
	Because once you acknowledge that you have won, then you create the space for people to start challenging you.
	Amazing, right?
	That was incredible.
	It's like she's a mole for the conservative movement in this country or something.
	And she's trying to undermine them by being like, yeah, okay.
	Yeah.
	I just can't get over it.
	I mean, like, I can't think of an institution that hasn't virtue signalled for Black Lives Matter, or LGBT, or whatever.
	Even the Conservative Party.
	The Conservative Party, the government institutions, and just the Parliament.
	Like, these supposedly partisan organs.
	And then, just every major corporation, you know, like, almost every newspaper, every, like, the universities, churches, like, everywhere virtue signals for this stuff.
	Yeah.
	I mean, she mentioned that the...
	The defundings.
	Like, the right wing has just been, like, defunded.
	Like, OANN, whatever it was, Newsmax, all of the demonetizations on YouTube, the MyPillow guy, you know, all of the...
	And then you've got various people, Matt Christensen being deplanted from Streamlabs, us being deplanted, well, my old channel being deplanted from Streamlabs, like, all of these other ones.
	It's like, oh my god.
	But she mentions the EU vote, and they're like, oh, these stupid free speech warriors trying to claim that the EU vote was under threat.
	What world are you living in?
	What was Gina Miller doing?
	The last four years, what did you think was going on?
	Like, were you in a coma?
	I don't understand, like, Are you new to politics?
	Because if you are, let me fill you in.
	They need to feel like they're the underdog constantly.
	But also they're all censored and they're not allowed to talk.
	And by the way, don't use critical thinking to listen to what they have to say.
	We have hate speech laws in this country on the books.
	Which is why you end up with things like this.
	So these are just a few memes I made a while back that I just happened to dredge up for this.
	So a candidate arrested over Churchill's speech.
	So there was a guy who was quoting Churchill in public, and then the police came around and arrested him.
	The police of vice and virtue here.
	And then the next one?
	For blaspheming.
	A man arrested for painting Islam is questionable on his home.
	Well, Islam isn't questionable.
	Don't you know that, Callum?
	But these guys, these are the ones who are not the underdogs.
	They're actually on top and there's nothing being done to them.
	They're the ones creating the power narrative.
	The next one here.
	Video of a man mocking Muslim prayer room in Bolton Hospital being investigated as a hate crime.
	So he went in there and made like a TikTok.
	Where he was just like, ah, la-la-la, pretending to pray, as if he's from Aladdin or something, because he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
	It's just a joke.
	It doesn't matter.
	The police are going to investigate this man and track him down.
	They've got to deal with him.
	I love that woman's expression as well.
	That is such pure contempt.
	This was in response to someone complaining, like, why do people keep using this image as if it means anything?
	It does mean something, that's why.
	It's a perfect meme face.
	That's what it is.
	Yeah, she looks really angry about something.
	So I wanted to get an image up.
	She's not wearing a mask either.
	A demonstration of BLM, as you were referring to earlier.
	I mean, this is the opposition here.
	You've got one side that are literally being arrested by the police of vice and virtue in our country, and then the opposing side, which march through in the middle of a pandemic, get no condemnation, they're allowed to march, they should have all been arrested according to- Hundreds of billions donated to Black Lives Matter.
	Yeah.
	Hundreds of billions.
	I mean, why do we have an organization like that in the UK? I don't know.
	I mean, you could sort of see why it expands in the US, but in the UK, it's just international funding and virtue signaling by confidence.
	It's tremendously profitable for the people running it.
	But they're the underdog, guys.
	It's really the right wing coming from them.
	So, as a gesture to try and point out that the left must stand up for free speech for God knows what reason, Owen Jones asked the question, so we'll just play his question.
	But how do we make the arguments that this isn't actually about all sorts of free speech, and actually it's been right with, for example, the government's new legislation on a free speech czar, which is a very Orwellian concept, forcing people to platform individuals against their will, which is an attack on free association and independent organisations.
	Bake the cake!
	Right, so how did the left make the argument for free speech?
	It's essentially the simplified version of what you're saying.
	Any guesses?
	Any guesses?
	I don't see how they can.
	They see how they can?
	Alright, people in the chat, put your guesses now, and I'm going to look afterwards while we're playing.
	What's the argument?
	What's the defense?
	What's the defense?
	The defense is free speech.
	Death to free speech.
	What?
	So, this is an unpopular answer, but we basically don't make the argument.
	We shouldn't let the lucky artists via the kind of moral shaming of free speech.
	into chilling us into seeding our right to object.
	And I think that a very big danger in the kind of civility discourse and the free speech discourse is that we end up seeding space because we don't want to look unreasonable.
	We don't want to look like we're impolite, like we're uncivil, like we're anti-free speech.
	But we are in a basically huge conflict, you know, a defining conflict between Right and left-wing values at the moment and the right is dominant.
	And what we need to do is basically enact and practice what we believe is free speech.
	And that includes, you know, being quite strident about no platforming, being quite confident about speech that we just don't want to entertain and not then be distracted by all these kind of red herring conversations about what free speech is and what free speech isn't.
	I think most people know what free speech is.
	And I think the purpose of the free speech argument is that we get bogged down in who's a good free speech person, who is a bad free speech person.
	And while we do that, all the objectionable speech that we should be spending time, you know, objecting to, boycotting, no platforming, objecting to, Basically goes unchallenged.
	So I think the whole free speech argument, we've done it.
	We've been doing this for two, three years now.
	I think the arguments are clear.
	I think we should move on to doing the things that the right accuses us of doing all the time, which is shutting down free speech.
	If we think it deserves to be shut down, we're not throwing anybody in jail or saying they're right, then go for it.
	I think less argument, more practice is the way forward.
	Watch Owen's response.
	That's fantastic.
	A very powerful counterweight and an unashamed counterweight.
	I mean, this is the problem, isn't it?
	Unashamed is a real problem.
	Which is the entire point of this entire discussion and debate.
	and what you're suggesting is to be a bit more proactive and not allow ourselves to be forced into a defensive posture where we're forced to trip over our own words to prove that we're not this menace, that's the right choice.
	That was fantastic.
	We really appreciate it.
	Thank you so much for joining us.
	Everyone, as I've said, Dubai...
	No denunciation.
	No, like, you're wrong on anything.
	Well, you can't, because...
	Okay, can we stop him talking now?
	The only reason I made it long was to show that he says nothing.
	He doesn't oppose it at all.
	John, can you stop it for a second, please?
	So, I mean, that was genuinely amazing.
	How does the left make the argument for free speech?
	No, we don't.
	We're trying to get people deplatformed.
	We are trying to destroy free speech as a threat to leftism.
	And he doesn't disagree.
	He doesn't oppose it at all.
	And any talk about free speech is us wasting time when we could be deplatforming people.
	The very thing that Owen Jones is just like, don't be silly, you're not being deplatformed, but these people are actively trying to deplatform you.
	Like, we are trying to do it.
	She doesn't even oppose it.
	Unreal.
	It's just...
	So, I mean, she is a gift, actually.
	Yeah, I love how she phrases it as well, which is that we don't want to get bogged down by the moral shaming of free speech.
	We don't want to look anti-free speech.
	There's a reason why it's moral shaming, because what you're doing is evil.
	You are evil people when you do this.
	Yeah, that's a horrible thing to do.
	And what's worse is the gaslighting.
	It's like, oh, it's the right that's shutting down free speech.
	It's the right.
	But also, we want to shut down free speech.
	And you're not being shut down just because we've taken everything away from you.
	It's like someone with schizophrenia or something.
	Yeah.
	But again, it fits into the sort of previous New York Times article, the sort of mega narrative.
	You know, it's like whatever we didn't say is wrong.
	That's what it is.
	You know, you will believe whatever reality we present to you, and you'll believe it in the moment at all times.
	And whatever happened previously, you can just ignore because we have said that that's wrong.
	Not opposition to her.
	I just wanted to show one last thing, just how crazy this lady is.
	And he invites her on and treats her as an expert on the topic, and she's worthwhile listening to.
	There's an interview she gave on Channel 4, 1.5 million subs, 7,000 views.
	Channel 4 clearly doing well.
	And in this interview she gives great statements like, identity politics exists, but it's mostly practiced by white people.
	What?
	What universe you're living in.
	Where?
	And then this is her talking about the free speech myth.
	Just play the clip.
	So the freedom of speech under attack is a myth that I think began kind of post-Dorkin's God delusion where people began to criticize Islam.
	I think patient zero with the freedom of speech is in Christ's myth was when people began to criticize Islam and Muslims and when there was pushback against that.
	The critics of Muslims or the Islamophobes would say, but it's not freedom of speech.
	You know, we can say whatever we want.
	Do you want to introduce blasphemy laws from, you know, from...
	Well, I was going to say, doesn't it go back to Rushdie?
	Yes, I guess.
	But with Rushdie, it's different because with Rushdie, the critics were on the Muslim side.
	So they were on the kind of, the critics of Rushdie were on the Oriental side.
	But with Dawkins, the critics of Islam were very much in the West.
	And so the freedom of speech excuse as a canard was rolled out far more frequently after, I would say, Islamophobia 2.0, which is in the past 10 years or so.
	I mean, unbelievable.
	That's unreal.
	Islam pushes back.
	You mean murdering people in the streets?
	But not only that, what she's saying is that people in the East don't care about free speech.
	People in the West care about free speech.
	And that's the difference.
	That's why the Westerners are bad.
	I mean, she improvised this.
	This isn't just like a one-off that I've taken out of context.
	She wrote an article about the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
	She knows this is going on.
	She knows that the, quote, pushback is people being murdered in response to criticizing Islam.
	She knows this.
	And in here, she tries to obfuscate the whole thing, saying, It is, however, important to not keep repeating the same mistakes, trying to trace the perpetrators to some certain origin.
	They have none.
	They belong to no single community or country or mosque.
	Mosque.
	Yeah, where did mosque go into this?
	That's weird.
	You know.
	You well know.
	She continues to say that the victims of the attack are not only French journalists, but also French Muslims, one of whom died in the attack, and the rest of whom, not condoned, but will be nevertheless feel the backlash.
	It's like, okay, please think of Muslims in this time.
	Macron is right about Islam and leftism, man.
	There's another great quote here, which is just, what civilization do terrorists represent?
	Fill it in your own time.
	Fill it in your own time.
	Yep.
	Macron is right about Islamo-leftism.
	I don't think we'll have time to do the final segment, because these two ran on, but it's...
	I just want to end the last bit here, because it's worth it.
	So Owen complaining about the conservative government not in charge, and this debunks anything worth saying today.
	He'll say, doesn't matter, Conservative Party's still in charge of the state.
	But are they conservative?
	I wanted to get the next image up, which is just this.
	Being offensive is an offence.
	The police standing outside of this.
	So for anyone who isn't watching, it's a bunch of police standing in front of a grey van.
	And on that grey van is a giant television screen.
	And on that giant television screen is a rainbow police flag...
	The LGBT pride flag with ER Police, Metropolitan Police symbol on it, and the words, being offensive is an offence.
	Merseyside Police stand with and support the LGBTQI plus community, and we will not tolerate hate crime on any level.
	come and speak to hashtag team beb amazing i mean literal police of vice and virtue that are you know being orchestrated by the conservative party and i just have to play this piece of gold which came out of the home office a little while back the last video before we do that this is horrific it is absolutely horrific but this is not new i mean this is the home office they put this out a while ago i just want to show the last bit of it so it's not just offensive It's an offence.
	I mean, that was their messaging in regards to hate crimes.
	That if you say things, it's not just offensive, it's an offence.
	We will get you.
	We will put you in jail.
	I mean, that's where we are.
	Well, you shouldn't go to parties, Callum.
	You shouldn't go to gatherings.
	But you're not being no platforms when you talk about free speech.
	Oh wait, you are, and we're doing it and we're proud of it.
	And the government's doing it.
	I mean, this is the insane world these guys live in, and I'm so glad we're not part of that ecosphere.
	Yeah, I'm so glad I don't have to try and maintain the narrative that the left isn't responsible for the deplatformings and the attacks on free speech, while also interviewing someone who's like, we need to do deplatformings more against free speech, and then say, yeah, and it's the right-wing conservative government that controls everything, therefore leftism is being crushed under the heel of the police, the rainbow jackbooted police of vice and virtue, like of tolerance and diversity.
	I'm so glad I don't have to try and maintain the contradictions between those narratives.
	It's embarrassing a life to live.
	I mean, it's like hanging out with Nazis and trying to be like, the Holocaust didn't happen, but we'll do it again.
	It's really weird.
	And also, it was the communists that did the Holocaust, and Adolf Hitler, he's a communist.
	Like, that's essentially the same sort of position they're in, and it's like, this is just mad.
	Absolutely.
	Quagmire.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Through the looking glass.
	Sorry that took on a while, but it's totally worth it.
	No, no, no.
	Same with the New York Times one.
	I didn't think it would take as long as it took, but they're literally arguing against critical thinking.
	And now free speech.
	Just coming out and saying, we're not for free speech.
	How do we defend free speech from the left?
	We don't.
	Okay, good job.
	We crush the Conservatives.
	Oh, God.
	I mean, all these people are in the Labour Party.
	They're active, significant members.
	Nazreen Malik is a writer for The Guardian.
	Owen Jones, right for The Guardian.
	Yeah, they're regularly on TV, as we saw.
	They're regularly given platforms.
	They're part of mainstream British politics.
	It's like, right, so radical communists and Islamo-leftists are the mainstream of the left in British politics.
	And what are the conservatives?
	Barely anything.
	What are they doing about either of those issues we showed?
	That the police of vice and virtue will take you down for being offensive?
	Nothing.
	The Conservatives should be repealing absolutely all of this.
	But right, so we have some video comments, so if you are a member of Lotuses.com, at the gold tier, you can send us video comments on questions that we will watch and respond to, react to.
	And so let's go for it.
	Good afternoon, Lotus Eaters.
	I just wanted to ask you if you've heard of History Debunked.
	He has a YouTube channel.
	He's like an older, very well-spoken English gentleman.
	Total Anglophile.
	I thought you guys might be interested.
	History Debunked?
	Yeah.
	Sounds like my kind of thing.
	I watched one of his videos the other day.
	He was talking about the compulsory ID cards they're trying to bring back in, because they always do every few years in the UK. He's a civil service one, so I imagine.
	And that it's complete nonsense that we shouldn't have it.
	He's a good guy.
	Seems great.
	I'd love him with you sometimes, I guess.
	Right, okay.
	I'll check him out.
	Good afternoon.
	I have recently published an epic poem, but sadly I do not know who reads epic poetry these days.
	But one Carl Benjamin has admitted to reading poetry, and therefore I pose the question.
	Are you intrigued?
	And if you do read it, did it entertain?
	I read, well, ancient English poetry, Anglo-Saxon poetry, because it's essentially the main way that you can get a look into the ethos of the civilization.
	So the things that were their Hollywood movies and things like that.
	I mean, I'm not really a reader of poetry outside of that.
	It was just historical interest and cultural interest, really.
	But I mean, if that guy's got something good, I guess you can check it out on his social media accounts.
	Assuming he has some left, that is.
	Hey Carl, greetings from Germany.
	Two things.
	Did you ever study C.S. Lewis or read his works?
	Especially in mere Christianity, I find to be very persuasive.
	He gave me the rational foundation for my belief.
	Secondly, I wanted to shill a genocide in China song I made.
	Kind of weird, I know.
	Give it a listen if you find the time.
	Other than that, keep up the good work.
	I'm watching every day, and I always look forward to the next one.
	Cheers.
	Oh, well, thank you for the compliment.
	I haven't actually studied C.S. Lewis, and I really should, because there's an awful lot that is...
	It goes around in the sort of cultural zeitgeist on the Internet.
	And it is something that I think the New Atheists really did drop the ball on.
	Was the stigmatization of Jesus as a way of trying to stigmatize Christians.
	Because, for example, I saw a meme that was going around the other day.
	And it was one of those, you know, thank you for, and then not you, doing X, Y, or Z, right?
	And the not you, because an atheist page, was Jesus.
	And it was like, you know, Isaac Newton, you know, Copernicus, all these other things, and Jesus.
	And I found that really interesting, because, like...
	Jesus didn't really create Christianity, right?
	Christianity occurs after the death of Jesus.
	So Christianity is the product of people like St.
	Paul, various other gospel writers, and the institutions of the church and the believers that build up after Jesus' death.
	So it seems unfair to say Jesus is a bad person, especially as it's Jesus' moral teachings that not only underpin the West, but also deeply inform all of the Moral innovations of the West, right?
	So if we're looking at it through a scientific perspective, like the sort of perspective of Francis Bacon, it's like, look, science can be used for the relief of man's estate, right, to make his life better.
	Christianity is definitely an animating factor in that, right?
	The ending of slavery was very much informed by Christian principles.
	And if you...
	Overlook this, then you overlook a massive section of humanity that have had their estate relieved by Christianity.
	So if we're putting him on the same sort of level as various scientists and other technological innovators, the moral technology of Christianity is worth...
	Realising and appreciating, even if you are an atheist like myself.
	So to try and denigrate Jesus' contributions to the moral development of mankind is quite unfair at the very best.
	And I think this...
	Like I said, I've not read C.S. Lewis, but I believe that that's the sort of direction that he goes in, at least in part.
	But like I said, I'm not an expert.
	But I think there's probably something worthwhile there.
	And I really should read it.
	Let's just try to hang around to it.
	But right, so we have comments on the website, because if you're a subscriber of any category, you can leave us a comment on the podcast, and we will prioritize over the comments that we have received.
	They're calling you a Jesus simp.
	I don't think that's simping.
	I don't think that's simping.
	I think it's just an accurate and reasonable historical interpretation of the effects of the moral teachings of Christianity.
	And that's just one example.
	There are lots of other ones.
	Like, all through the Middle Ages, the reason that slavery died out in Europe and was replaced with serfdom is because of the Catholic Church.
	They didn't like the idea.
	And this is why Christianity happened to gain a lot of prominence in the early Roman Empire with slaves and the serfs and the people at the bottom because it suddenly means that you're not valued just purely on your material characteristic of being a slave.
	You have more value than that in the eyes of God and things like this.
	It's a moral technology that changed the world.
	And so whether you like Jesus or not, which I don't really care either way, but you've got to give him the credit he's owed there, I think.
	Anyway, White Hot Peppers, our roving correspondent from within the occupation force of the capital.
	She's in the zone.
	She's in the zone, yeah.
	Happy Monday, gents.
	Sorry, nothing exciting this weekend, but I was walking around the inside of the capital on my break and noticed a plant was wilting and losing leaves.
	I realised that no one had wanted any of these plants here since God knows when.
	It might not sound important to anyone else, but a lot of plants were rare or endangered in the capital.
	I felt incredibly bad for them and spent a few hours watering them all.
	I had a few people say, just let them die, they will get new ones, or why do you care, etc.
	But I told them I don't want my tax money to pay for my new plants when I have the power to help them while I'm sitting around here doing nothing anyways.
	Something I've noticed is that the ecosystem here is all screwed.
	All the squirrels, rabbits, bats, birds, rats, mice, foxes, and other animals are trapped inside the fence and aren't getting any food from tourists so able to scavenge for food.
	I've seen several squirrels try to kill each other over some peanuts and attack a few guardsmen eating.
	Rats are getting chewing and getting into our backpacks to find food.
	I know it doesn't seem important, but I can't help but see the hypocrisy and the environmentalists screaming about climate change and the poor plants and animals, but don't care about the ones right in front of them.
	Let me know if you guys need anything from me.
	Thanks for everything you do.
	It helps.
	Well, thanks for the updates, to be honest.
	It's something I hadn't thought about.
	Yeah, it doesn't seem important, but when you start noticing it, I mean, the fact that the capital occupation is driving all the local wildlife mad and turning them feral is very interesting, isn't it?
	But yeah, we hope that nothing happens and that everything's fine and eventually you're dismissed and allowed to go home.
	I don't think she's gonna be killed by the squirrels, but...
	No, no, but, like, who knows what happens tomorrow?
	Oh, yeah.
	You know, like, you know, I don't think she's gonna be attacked by squirrels, but, like, you know, who knows?
	I'm reminded of the, what is it, that Greek proverb when she's watering those plants.
	Like, a society grows great when old men plant trees at their shade they know they will never sit in.
	Yeah, I looked into it.
	It's actually not a Greek proverb, it's a Quaker proverb.
	Again, another one of those things that the Christians had right and we just have to accept.
	There's a Chinese one as well.
	There's going to be a Chinese variant for all of these things.
	The point is the moral of the thing is correct.
	Nicholas Malson says, Hey folks, I hope you had a good time off.
	We had time off?
	Do we have time off?
	What, over the weekend?
	Oh, well, I suppose so, yeah.
	I want to use this opportunity to thank Hugo and Josh for an excellent couple of episodes this past weekend.
	Keep up the great work.
	Yeah, I really enjoyed Josh's crusading his marks on the individual.
	Oh God, I've just accidentally pressed the wrong thing and now I've lost my place.
	Do you want to read a couple out while I'm...
	You've talked about the line where government tyranny invokes a public response.
	My question is, when and why then?
	That might not be best kept for a premium podcast in the same way the Memento Mori article.
	When do you decide that actually this is too much and we ought to just overthrow the government?
	Well, I don't think there is any one factor when revolutions happen.
	And I just want to stress that I'm very much against revolutions.
	I want an incrementalist process, an evolutionary process of government, because I can't think of a revolution since the American one that turned out okay.
	I think all of the other revolutions seem to have been quite bad, actually, and would have been better if they'd not happened and things had incrementally and gradually changed.
	But yeah, I don't think there is any one particular flashpoint.
	And he's right.
	It might be worth us spending some time going through a series of famous revolutions and seeing what the flashpoint was on each one of them and see if we can establish any commonalities between them.
	Because maybe we can actually establish that so we can predict in future if a revolution is coming.
	I don't know.
	I'm not sure that's quite what he's getting at.
	I think he's more getting at when should you morally decide actually this government needs to be destroyed?
	And I think from a liberal perspective, surely at least one thing I can think of is the fact that you have no representative.
	If you have no way...
	Taxation without representation, was it for the American Revolution?
	Yeah, but it's deeper than that.
	The fact that you can't alter things, you can't do that incremental change that you're talking about, well then you are left with no option.
	I'm sure there's more things to talk about there.
	Yeah, but I mean, that's right, but the question isn't as much sort of, you know, identifying the line is not really something that is possible, I think, because there isn't a specific line.
	It's like a confluence of things, and then a problem occurs that is emblematic of what everyone's been sitting on the whole time.
	So if you're hungry, you're being oppressed, you've got no opportunities, the future looks bleak, And then something happens that makes everyone think of those circumstances, and there's a big outrage.
	That's the kind of thing, I think, that we're talking about.
	But I don't think there's any one particular thing, and I don't even think it's very predictable, to be honest.
	You just have to wait for that flashpoint to occur.
	A brick maker says, as a teacher, this fascinates me.
	I goes against everything I teach my students, which is always to go to the original source, if at all possible.
	Telling someone to always avoid primary sources is ludicrous and a blatant attempt at thought control.
	Disgusting.
	Exactly.
	That's why we had to cover that article.
	New York Times promotes thought control, promotes submission to authority, promotes uncritical thinking.
	That's incredible.
	Thomas Murthy.
	Hi, load-seaters.
	I was interviewed last week by ITV news crew as I came out the tube station on my way to work.
	I was asked the standard questions regarding Boris's planned lifting of the lockdown.
	I tried my best to shoehorn in non-mainstream talking points and traffic Lockean ideas into my answers.
	Good job, sir.
	And I tell you what, right, after we recently remade the set of the podcast, what do you think of it, by the way, Callan?
	I don't know.
	I'm one of those people where things move and I'm happy for a bit.
	So we'll see after a little bit if that goes.
	That's good.
	That's the essence of dadism.
	Any change is bad change because it wasn't something I predicted.
	But let us know in the chat what you think as well.
	I'm actually really happy with it.
	And it feels more comfortable to do the podcast on.
	But the important thing, right, is because my dad, I was on the phone to him the other day because it was his birthday, he was like, you're saluting with the wrong arm, son.
	It's like, yeah, I know, but the thing was in the way, so now I can salute with the right arm, and correctly.
	Yeah, so you can't now.
	Perfect!
	But yes, good job.
	But I think I was inarticulate and came across poorly.
	I was also nervous.
	I wish that if something like that happens again, I'm better prepared and that I remember to give you guys a shout-out on national TV. I'm kicking myself that I didn't do so.
	Keep up the good work.
	Well, thank you for thinking of us, but honestly, you're not obligated to.
	And don't be hard on yourself, because in hindsight, it's very easy to be exceptionally critical of what you did at the time, but what you're doing at the time is much more difficult to engage with, so I'm sure you did a great job.
	Don't worry about it.
	They'll give us a shout-out.
	That's funny.
	It'll irritate them.
	Yes.
	But then, I have Sauron and all that.
	Do we want that?
	Tom Ricketts.
	This intellectual elitism from the New York Times reminds me of how the church used to operate back when they were ruling class in Britain.
	They didn't want the plebs being able to read the Bible themselves.
	This could lead them to challenging the ideas presented to them by the priests and religious leaders.
	Today, the cathedral is operating in the same way under different labels.
	Have we got a premium podcast going up today?
	We could put it up today.
	I haven't organised that yet.
	I thought you said it was going up on Monday.
	I don't know.
	No, I said it was done.
	Okay.
	Well, we've got a premium podcast that will be going up this week, which you can watch if you're a member of Lotuses.com.
	We'll get it up as soon as possible.
	But it's exactly about that point, because this is the way that the medieval guild system used to work, because of Christianity.
	And this is specifically to discuss the sort of way that this kind of ethical system infiltrates into institutions and ends up forcing them to operate in certain ways than others.
	I won't go into it.
	You'll be able to watch it this week because it's a really good premium podcast.
	But you were basically correct.
	Yes, this is exactly the same way.
	Capstasher says...
	We went back to the primary sources to talk about it.
	Yeah, we went back to the primary sources and got some knowledge that we weren't given previously from the almighty Wikipedia.
	Capstasher says, Hey guys, loving the podcast.
	My girlfriend absolutely hates me.
	What?
	So it would make my day if you said hello to Ellen.
	I'd love to have that to get a reaction out of her.
	Anyway, since free speech is something to be guaranteed by the government, and apparently it doesn't apply to private companies, we could say this.
	This is instead an attack on free market of ideas.
	Something along the lines of removing and deplatforming certain views automatically stops these platforms from being part of the free market of ideas.
	There could be some legislation made around that.
	That's actually not a bad idea, but first of all, hello Ellen, how are you?
	Don't hate your boyfriend.
	He's a good guy.
	Boyfriend has a great taste in podcasts.
	Absolutely.
	Treated well today.
	Absolutely.
	But yeah, he's left another comment.
	He means hates him for watching it.
	Well, that's okay.
	You know, just explain to her that...
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	What excuse can he give?
	I don't know.
	I think we need to find out what Ellen doesn't like.
	What are we doing wrong?
	Presumably there's an unauthorized source.
	Long Talks on the Nietzsche says, Leftism is just the new religious fanaticism.
	But now instead of Pope, you have politicians who tell you what to believe and where to direct your rage.
	It's not a coincidence that this all became accelerated around the time of the government lockdowns, limited church gatherings, but allowed BLM protests.
	Yeah, the phenomenal hypocrisy regarding the BLM protests and other protests or gatherings is just disgraceful.
	I mean, there were articles of people saying, actually, the BLM protests prevented the spread of coronavirus.
	No one believes that.
	No one believes that.
	It just goes against reason itself.
	Elliot Scopes.
	It's nice to see them admit that leftism is now a religion with high-ranking religious prophets in the form of uni professors, amongst others, that you cannot question and to do so is a sin.
	Exactly.
	That New York Times article is such a gift, I swear to God.
	I just love it.
	Like, I love this year how it's just...
	Mask off!
	We're just going to come out and say it.
	Like, yes, we buy Joe Biden.
	We literally give him stacks of cash.
	Yes, we're going to basically set up an occupied zone in the capital.
	There's nothing you can do about it and we'll keep it there forever.
	Yes, we hate free speech.
	Yes, we think you should never talk to anyone except us.
	Don't read things.
	Don't read the primary sources.
	Just listen to what we have to say.
	No investigation needed.
	Wikipedia is the arbiter of truth.
	Mask off!
	Like, it's crazy.
	It's going to be a good year.
	It's already insane.
	When I first started doing all of this, I thought they would be the fail points, right?
	It would be at that point where you get them to confess that, in fact, this is the case, that they'd have to be like, right, my position has collapsed.
	Other people would be like, you don't really think that, do you?
	You've got to retire from politics into obscurity.
	Exactly.
	But then the New York Times is like, yeah, well, we're all committed to this and deal with it.
	The Engaged View.
	Superchat says, Yeah, that's mad.
	That's such post hoc reasoning.
	Zonk RT. I don't think shifting, or sifting I think it was actually, is limited to the mainstream narrative at all.
	There was a long time where I didn't do any due diligence on my political information because I didn't have time and trusted you to do it for me.
	And that may well be something that you have done, but we would never advocate that that would be a good idea.
	We never advocate it's the only thing you should do, which is what is being advocated.
	But not even that.
	I've always said, look, watch content creators from around the political spectrum, or else you're going to get trapped in a political bubble, and you're going to find yourself turning into some sort of extremist.
	And the...
	I mean, we always provide the links to the sources, everything we use, that you can find on losese.com, on the podcast page.
	And so, we're not in any way implying you shouldn't read the original sources.
	In fact, we are saying the exact opposite.
	Where you can read the original sources.
	Don't rely on someone else's interpretation of them.
	And that's what the book club's about.
	I think more of the point he's getting at there was, you know, let's say the New York Times, like, go and read their stuff.
	But he's right, it's not just the major narrative.
	Because you don't have the time.
	But if you want to investigate something, you should go to the primary source if you have the time and you can.
	Whereas the New York Times position is, don't.
	Like, just trust us.
	It's like, yeah, that doesn't make me trust you at all.
	Yeah, that makes me, in fact, immediately suspicious of you.
	Student of History says, that is the worst thing to do because if I made all of my decisions within the first 30 to 90 seconds, I'd be in jail multiple times over.
	Anyone who tries to tell you that you don't think is trying to control your thought and your action.
	That's completely correct.
	Anyone who says to you, look, you make better decisions with less information, probably not true.
	I mean, that's someone who's trying to lead you into making a bad decision.
	That's what grifting is.
	Shadow Rodney says, I've been working on my fantasy world for eventual stories.
	Gina and Daily Wire's deal makes me hopeful that I don't have to cater to crazy leftism.
	P.S. I don't know how to use debit card stuff.
	Well, don't worry, neither do I, and I'm hopeful that they produce something really good.
	Remarkable, to be honest.
	Who knows?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Don't go to the weapons factory and find out if it's real.
	Yeah.
	I mean, George Bush in 2004, I think it was, just openly admitted that bin Laden had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq.
	After the invasion of Iraq had happened, he was just asking the press conference to say, well, nothing.
	It's like...
	Then why the hell are you there?
	Other reasons.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Other reasons.
	Well, we needed that oil, didn't we?
	But yeah, it's unreal.
	Jeremy McDude for $17.76, the right amount, says, I work at a local school and so far it's been open since August 2020.
	Oh God, I wish.
	COVID has been confirmed a few times, but so far no deaths.
	As far as I know, I've not gone sick without a mask.
	Well, that's something we probably have to disavow for YouTube's rules and regulations.
	Zero B Zen says, These are almost tropes at this point.
	When not in power, clamor for free speech and critical thinking.
	When in power, clamor for censorship and destroy any criticism.
	And of course, tell people that you're not doing that and they're the ones doing that and everything is backwards and topsy-turvy and not as it seems.
	That's the thing I hate most about it.
	I mean, imagine being in these circles and having to propagate this stuff.
	It's just...
	I would feel like I was going insane.
	Ugh.
	I'm sure an equal exists on partisan right spectrums about this issue or that issue.
	We're the real social justice warriors?
	I don't know.
	I never hear them saying it.
	But it's really cringe.
	I just don't understand why you would hang around with such people.
	Owen Jones, for example, he knows.
	After listening to her, he's promoting her.
	He knows that they're the guys arguing for censorship.
	And yet he still opens his segment with, oh, but it's the right doing this.
	It's like...
	It's incredible, isn't it?
	It's so transparently bad that I just assume that he's a liar and he knows what he's doing.
	I mean, at best.
	Yeah.
	What am I supposed to assume?
	I mean, he could be a complete idiot.
	I mean, again, I'm holding out for maybe they're all just moles and they're trying to discredit the leftist movement.
	Yeah, no one's done more against leftism than Owen Jones, I suppose.
	Do you think the right's individualism is a hindrance to its fight against the left?
	Also, do you think V's theory of wokeism was propagated by corporations in response to Occupy Wall Street?
	Yeah, I think the wokeism in response to Occupy Wall Street is actually quite a compelling theory.
	Yeah.
	I don't know how organized I would say it would be.
	I mean, it could well be that it was just a convenient distraction that was presented at just the right time.
	But I wouldn't be surprised if it had some sort of animus behind it.
	But the right's individualism is what distinguishes it from the left.
	It's why everyone looks at the fascists like they're just another bunch of leftists, because they're not individualists.
	So it's not even that it's a hindrance.
	It's what you are that isn't leftism.
	Verbum says Galileo insulted the Pope by publishing a pamphlet calling him an idiot.
	He couldn't prove his theory at any time.
	Yeah, based.
	With the tech available and demanded theology reinterpreted, he was asshole.
	Well, he was also right.
	But even if he wasn't, let's say it turns out the earth was the sun.
	He shouldn't have been imprisoned.
	I don't care.
	Yeah, like, okay, he's allowed to be a bit of a rude man.
	And yeah, as an atheist who comes from a Protestant company, to hell with the Pope.
	The Popes are goddamn progressive anyway, these days.
	Buddy Lee says, the first result I get from...
	Yeah, so anti-Catholic as well as Islamophobic is now on my resume.
	The first result I get from Google for most random searches is usually a trial for Disney+.
	Student of history again.
	Free speech is dangerous.
	It means you've run into an idea.
	You can't argue from your own positions.
	You need a handicap to win a debate or an argument.
	Correct.
	Zeronex says, I've never heard a more resounding recommendation of boomer sources for education.
	Any work with pre-1960 copyright is likely lacking French philosopher infiltration and is probably safe to read.
	That is actually a fantastic point.
	If in the 1960s and 70s it's the French philosophers who end up infiltrating and influencing academia, then it makes sense to read stuff from before...
	So it's not corrupted by things that came after it.
	That's a good point.
	But again, that article on LotusEast.com is fantastic, and I totally recommend it.
	The Halternator says, Hey LotusEasters, before Parlour got axed, you gave me a shout-out at the creator of monsters.
	And in the interim, I finished the last chapter of my comic book on Webtoon.
	I'd appreciate your shout-out.
	God bless.
	Well, there we go.
	At the creator of monsters.
	Presumably on Gab and Parler.
	Free speech is free speech is free speech, says the Universal Acid.
	That's true, but what if you're against free speech?
	Like Owen Jones' wonderful guest Nazreen Malik.
	James Howard, we live in a society.
	Bold, pushing the envelope.
	That's true.
	Cool Frog, they're trying to push the disinformation narrative hard, going so far as to have a game, which is something called Agents of Influence, to brainwash people to censor things they don't like.
	Yeah, it's turning them into the agents and foot soldiers of the cathedrals narrative, like this mega narrative where everything we didn't say is wrong.
	You need people on the ground defending that, because otherwise everyone's going to be like, that's crazy, we don't trust you, why would we believe you?
	And it's easier to have people who brainwash themselves by just reading your articles into believing that actually you can't trust anything that wasn't written by the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or wherever it is.
	The party.
	The party, exactly.
	Student of history, again, man, we are going to end up bankrupting you at this rate, aren't we?
	You could send us these comments by signing up on the site and post them.
	I know I shouldn't be like, stop giving us money, because obviously that's bad business sense, but you definitely could.
	Macron is right, this Islamo-leftism, this Anglo-Saxon ideology is destroying France and the West as a whole.
	Yeah, this is revenge for the Hundred Years' War, Macron.
	That's what you get.
	But more importantly, you did this to yourselves.
	This is highly ironic that you're complaining about French philosophy coming to France.
	Sorry.
	Mr.
	Fantasmic says, That's correct.
	David Starkey has brilliant lectures on this that you'll be able to find online, where he talks about the fact that, I mean, if you look at it, why is there a sergeant-at-arms in the American Senate?
	It's not very Republican-sounding.
	Why is there a sergeant at arms in the parliament?
	Oh, because of the king's parliament.
	Because of his inheritance from our medieval history.
	Anyway, a wild dev if you want him.
	Hey, dev.
	Hello, my friends.
	I'll be back soon once I solve the riddle of how we can think and act like them and somehow not become them.
	Good luck, Dev!
	How's...
	How are you...
	Okay, yeah, good luck solving that riddle.
	But anyway...
	What does he even say?
	He's...
	Dev is off on an intellectual sojourn through various texts and ideas, and he's doing...
	I get periodic updates from him.
	Discord is really interesting.
	He's figuring out...
	How we can advance the cause of liberalism without ending up becoming the sort of communist or fascist.
	And it's like, right, okay, well, good luck.
	I hope you find something really useful.
	I'm not that optimistic, frankly.
	I don't know what he's going to come back with, but he wants to act like them without becoming like them.
	And it's like, but it's the acts that make them what they are.
	And so if we act in the same way, how can we call ourselves different qualitatively?
	Anyway.
	Yeah, I don't think we can.
	But anyway, thank you everyone for joining us.
	Sorry we only had two segments today, but these seemed like important ones.
	So hopefully they were illuminating for you.
	If you want more content from us, you can of course go to lotuses.com, sign up, become a premium member, and get access to all of our excellent premium content.
	And in the meantime, there's loads of free content there as well if you just happen to not want to pay, but you're interested in what we have to say.

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