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June 22, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:44

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #420

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	Good afternoon folks.
	Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Wednesday, the 22nd of June 2022.
	Man, time is flying quickly, isn't it?
	I'm joined by Nick Buckley, founder of the charity The Mancunian Way, and not cancel culture victim is the, I think, correct term for you, Nick?
	Resurrected.
	Yes, resurrected.
	And so, yes, today we're going to be talking about why young people are so miserable, which is something I think you might have some key insights in, and I can definitely make some bigoted judgments about it.
	Just teasing, of course.
	We're going to be talking about what happened to Nick when the Black Lives Matter Council culture came for him, and of course, Twitter submitting to Elon Musk, which will be good fun.
	But before we start, on Friday we have our gold-tier Zoom call, so if you're a gold-tier subscriber, do join us on Friday.
	I shall be here this time.
	Sorry, I couldn't make it last time.
	I will be here this time, and remember we will have strict five-minute time segments for talking, because apparently we get more people involved in that than we expect.
	But anyway, let's begin.
	So, why are young people so miserable?
	This is a question that lots of people are asking and the answers all seem to end up triangulating on one particular answer.
	But before we get to the answer, the question could be, well, maybe they're looking into their future and thinking, well, what am I actually moving into here?
	And this is something I covered on a premium hangout that we did on Notices.com called, Megacity 1 is not an aspirational future.
	Because with the way this country is going, that's what it's going to end up like.
	Not just because we are going to house almost every person in the world on these islands, but we're also going to have the sort of overbearing managerial government and...
	Short police force.
	Short on patience, perhaps, should we say?
	That came with Megacity 1.
	I was really proud of this.
	Hang on, it was really good.
	So go and check that out if you'd like to subscribe to us and support us for the cost of a Super Chat a month.
	But also, we are hiring.
	So again, thank you to everyone who has subscribed.
	We're looking for video content presenters and writers and a video editor.
	So do go to lotuses.com forward slash careers if you would like to read those job descriptions and get in contact and put yourself forward.
	But anyway, so let's begin.
	I find it ironic that Vice Magazine, of all places, are like, young people are unhappier than ever.
	Coming from Vice Magazine.
	Vice.
	As in, they're not living a virtuous life, and Vice Magazine, like, hmm, I don't know why all of these wayward young people are so miserable.
	One of the accusations they make is that COVID and the COVID lockdowns are responsible for this.
	Now, they are undoubtedly, I think, a contributing factor to this, but this did not begin with COVID. This has been going on for quite some time.
	But just as they say, this is an article about young people in Britain in particular, but happiness and confidence in 16 to 25-year-olds in the UK has nosedived to lows not seen in over a decade.
	The Office of National Statistics Research shows that young people are significantly more likely to experience high levels of anxiety and loneliness in the general population, even though the COVID restrictions have been lifted.
	And they are exploring why this might be.
	Now, they're very left-wing, and so they put it down to the economy.
	But we'll talk about why that might not be the case in a minute.
	This is also a problem in America, as National Review posted recently.
	In 2020, this was.
	So again, before the COVID lockdowns, this was a problem.
	In America between 1946 and 2006, the suicide rate quadrupled for males ages 15 to 24 and doubled for females in the same age.
	Since 1950, the suicide rate per 100,000 Americans has increased by almost 50%, from 11.4% to 14%.
	So it's going up.
	And Reuters Health reported that suicidal thinking, severe depression, rates of self-injury among US college students has more than doubled over less than a decade.
	It says one nationwide study, which is not exactly good news.
	And the study's co-author, Jean Tweng, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University says, it suggests that something is seriously wrong in the lives of young people.
	Now, I'm sorry I'm front-loading this quite a bit, but I just want to get all the statistics on the table because people would say, well, is this not a case of modernity and the Western world?
	It's like, no, actually.
	It turns out that one in five young people worldwide is depressed.
	UNICEF published their State of the World's Children report.
	In 2021, and found that a survey of 20,000 people from 21 countries, 19% of respondents struggled with depression.
	For example, more than one in three young people in Cameroon and Mali reported feeling regularly depressed, whereas one in five people in the UK and one in 10 in Ethiopia and Japan felt the same way.
	So this has been going on for a while.
	In 2018, The Atlantic published an article talking about this.
	So again, pointing out that this is happening before the COVID lockdowns happened.
	Which is why this is important.
	And they call it the happiness recession, where just the number of people who say they're very happy in life just falls.
	And so now it's one in four people who says they're very happy, with obviously the curve getting worse as things go along.
	22% of young men and 28% of young women reporting they're very happy.
	So this social trend has been going on inexorably.
	The COVID lockdowns, of course, have exacerbated it.
	But the question is, why?
	Now, Nick, why might that be, do you think?
	I've got two thoughts on this.
	The first thought is because of the internet and smartphones, the world now is a much smaller place.
	So if I lived in a village in the middle of Cameroon 30 years ago, all I would know would be that village and I would be probably a big fish in a small pond and I would know everybody there and I would know my status in that village and what that might project in my future.
	But today, you're looking on your phone and that little lad in Cameroon is now looking at Singapore, London, America.
	He's looking at all other young people across the world who are mostly lying about how good their lives are, by the way.
	And he's looking at his life going, I'm fed up.
	My life is absolutely awful compared to all these people who live everywhere else.
	And it's not true.
	All of these Instagram influencers who spend like six hours crafting the perfect shot and then go back to their depression.
	Absolutely.
	And the second point is we always seem to forget that we're social creatures and living on your phone and living on the internet is like saccharin instead of sugar.
	It feels the same at the time but just like saccharin it's damaging your body because what we need is face-to-face contact.
	We need people who will touch your shoulder while they're talking to you or your friend giving you a little punch on the arm.
	All those things when you're with people That's what makes us happy.
	It's having friends.
	It's having that community around you.
	And we call the internet now, you know, different communities.
	I'm with the painting little ship community.
	It's not really a community.
	These are all strangers who just share one hobby.
	We need to get together and we need to get people and kids off their phones, socialising.
	And socialising and making friends is difficult.
	And what we do is we give them a choice.
	You can make real friends, which is difficult, or you can have invisible made-up friends on your phone.
	So children pick the easy option like children nearly always do.
	And I think that you've really summarized and struck the point precisely there as well.
	It is the genuine social, the bonds that you get in people's presence that you just can't get over the internet.
	You just can't form these kind of reliable friendships.
	And you miss out on so much of human interaction that is non-verbal over the internet.
	The way someone looks at you, the way they laugh in response to your jokes.
	Like you tell a joke and a lot of people might hit the, you know, the laugh emoji or something.
	But it's not the same as seeing the joy in someone's face.
	And again, there are so many small things.
	If you start someone laughing with a joke, you can often make it, intensify it by telling further jokes on the same topic and reduce them to absolute fits of laughter.
	And that's a very pleasurable thing to do.
	Everyone enjoys it.
	And you can't do these sorts of things.
	You don't get the sort of memorable interactions on the internet that you get.
	Let me go back just for a moment.
	Matt Chavit has uncovered quite a lot of child sexual abuse.
	And when we're talking to the individual girls who have been abused, we've come across one boy, but it's nearly always girls.
	And what we've learnt from the girls about how they got themselves in that situation was because we've had one or two say to us, all I really wanted was a hug.
	And to get that hug, you're willing to be abused because we're social creatures.
	And having that man, that stranger who doesn't care for you, put his arms around you and for those couple of seconds treat you like a princess was enough for those girls to say, well, you can do whatever you want now to a certain extent because we're social creatures.
	Yeah, it's ironic that we call it social media.
	Given how it is driving us to antisocial behaviors, where we don't spend time with friends and family.
	And we feel that it is easier to not do that.
	We think that just messaging a DM is enough to count as social interaction.
	It's like, no, that's not enough.
	You need to spend an hour in each other's company to gain some sort of genuine benefit from it.
	And like you say, the fact that children are on this.
	I'm currently in a bit of a war with my own wife over whether our kids will have mobile phones.
	I'm totally against it.
	I'm totally against it.
	And honestly, if the government came out tomorrow and said, right, we're going to make it illegal for anyone under 25 to have a mobile phone, I'd be like, well, that's good for them.
	Don't get me wrong, it would be tyrannical from a liberal perspective, but it would be better for mental health.
	It needs monitoring and controlling by the parents.
	I don't think it should be have the phone 24 hours a day or never have a phone.
	It's up to that parent to work out that balance, and it should be a balance.
	I'm one that never have a phone constraint, but that's because I've had to deal with my kids and having phones.
	But no, you are right.
	And the worst thing is, and I've seen it in my own daughter, where if she's allowed to be on her phone, she'll spend all day in her room on her phone, and she'll end up, after a few days, just being miserable and depressed.
	Whereas when she's naughty and we take the phone away as a punishment, Her mood just brightens for the next week or so.
	It's like, right, okay, this is very clearly...
	Addictive.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's addictive, and it's not good for them.
	But, of course, you get people who are left-wingers who will say, well, it's because young people don't have enough money or opportunities and things like this.
	Well, that's exactly right.
	If you can go to the next one, John.
	In 2010, The Guardian, when they were able to report on such things honestly, would post articles like this showing that, well, hang on a second...
	Children don't actually self-report unhappiness when they're poor.
	And this is something I've tried to explain to people before.
	Because my family is not a family that comes from any money or anything, like Wiltshire farmers and Welsh miners.
	And so my family came from an incredibly poor background, but they weren't unhappy because they had each other.
	And that's what these children report in this study.
	They did a study of 32,000 young people and found the children living in poverty were just as happy as those who came from wealthy families.
	And when asked, the research shows the children are more likely to say they're happy if they're able to talk to their parents about their problems.
	It's the relationship that matters.
	That's what makes you happy.
	Same with adults.
	Children are the same as adults.
	What we need to be happy is we need structure, we need boundaries, we need rules.
	We need to be able to know the sphere we're operating in because then we don't have to worry about certain things.
	When there's no boundaries, And no rules.
	Anything goes.
	And when anything goes, that's a tremendous amount of decisions you're making every single second and it can wear you out.
	But when you have children and they know the boundaries, they feel safe within that context.
	And that's the same with adults.
	That's why we have laws of the land.
	And it's also stability and reliability.
	I think predictability is good for kids.
	When you've got no boundaries, everything's uncertain.
	You actually don't know what's going to happen next, and so you're left in this particularly insecure world.
	Whereas if you know, you know, I get home at 3 o'clock, I do my homework until 4 o'clock, then we have dinner, and then I sit with my dad for an hour or something like that, which is basically my evenings.
	But you can rely on that.
	You come to expect it.
	You know what's going to happen.
	And so you feel that you have some sort of agency of your own surroundings, Because there's predictability about them.
	But if you don't know what's going to happen, you don't know if there's going to be a strange man, you know, at home that night or something like this, it's terrifying.
	You need to be able to predict what other people are going to do.
	Yeah.
	Because if you don't, our natural reaction is go to violence straight away to protect yourself.
	Yeah.
	So a child needs to know, my mom and dad's going to treat me nice.
	I've got safety at school.
	My friends will do these things.
	But when you have no idea what that person is going to do in front of you, You're on edge all the time when you've got to be as well.
	You don't have a choice.
	And it's a cruel thing to put children through, I think.
	But anyway, so as lots of studies have been showing, yes, it appears that it is social media that is not good for children.
	Like they say in this report on the Washington Free Beacon, Up to 20% of teenagers have depression.
	We'll get to the next one, John.
	And it appears to be the consequence of social media because this is at the root of everything because it determines how we choose to interact with one another.
	So it isn't merely just looking at the screen.
	It's the fact that that screen time is now destroying the personal relationships you would have had.
	I'm sure the same when you were a kid, you'd have to go out and knock for your friends. - Yes. - You'd have to go physically knock on the door.
	Is Jim there?
	Does he want to come out?
	No, he can't.
	He's been grounded today.
	Oh, okay, I'll go see Bob, you know.
	And you had an actual thing you had to do rather than just click, click, click, click.
	It's physical.
	And again, this was exercise.
	You had to walk from place to place.
	You can see how much more wholesome it was, obviously.
	But this in America obviously is the same problem Pew polling did an analysis of a survey that shows that the average teenager apparently spends 16 minutes less per day socializing than 10 years ago.
	Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but that adds up.
	Over the course of a year, that's entire days they don't spend socializing.
	And it's quite terrible.
	The number of times that teenagers go out with their parents has slipped, falling by half a day on average, falling by half day to a day per week on average, So hardly ever now.
	Again, me and my parents used to do things all weekend.
	You know, every weekend we'd have something to do.
	And it's just terrible.
	And so you've got this problem.
	And so when the young people are asked, as in, you know, What are you doing?
	Well, it turns out that they're not really doing any of the things that we would have done when we were young.
	For example, many young people haven't tried alcohol.
	Now, I'm not suggesting that teenagers should drink underage, obviously, but it is what teenagers try and do when I was young.
	If you're not risk averse.
	If you're not risk averse, yes.
	But, I mean, it was a very unusual teenager who wasn't sneaking some alcohol out of their parents' drinks cabinet.
	It was a very unusual teenager who wasn't going out and trying to kiss a girl.
	But, like, a massive drop in the number of people who've even been on a date.
	I actually saw something the other day, I forgot to pull up for this, where it's something like 40% of young Japanese men under 25 have never even been on a date.
	I've never, like, even...
	Like, almost half the country has had no interaction with the opposite sex.
	That's insane.
	It's just madness, isn't it?
	It's like...
	How can a civilization continue itself when you have a generation like that?
	Because you're socialized by your friends and by your parents.
	So the less time you spend with them, the less time you're being socialized into your society, into your culture, into your community.
	And what's socializing us now is the phone and what's on the phone.
	Most of it is lies and rubbish.
	There's perverts on there.
	There's lunatics on there.
	And it's basically full of...
	Lies and people portraying something that they're not.
	Hence, we're not socialising young people the right way.
	We're socialising them into a way that doesn't exist in reality.
	Hence why they're depressed.
	And there's also the phenomenon of sort of...
	Self-funneling your own, sort of curating your own choices into a funnel that only shows you two or three different subjects at any one time.
	So you become very immersed in one or two particular things at the expense of learning anything about the myriad of other subjects that exist.
	And so you become kind of fixated in a monomaniacal way about a particular issue, a particular topic, which is really weird because in the real world...
	You would just be exposed to lots of different competing subjects for your attention.
	And so, again, it makes you sort of isolated and siloed and unaware of what the rest of the world around you is even like.
	And if everyone's doing this on their phones, how can you know anything about the people around you?
	They've got this weird expertise in one or two really specific and niche subjects and know nothing about the rest of the world around them.
	How can you even start a conversation with that person?
	Because they can only talk about one thing.
	And if you're not already in that silo, you don't know anything about this thing and you've got no interest in it.
	You wouldn't know where to start.
	So this is not good.
	And when asked, young people do say, well, it is social...
	Well, sorry, actually, before we go on to this next one, there is a bit more on this.
	So one popular explanation, they say, is the decline of socialization is the rise of technology.
	And I think that's probably true, and this shows in their habits.
	Essentially, 100% of 18 to 24-year-olds are on social media.
	54% think they spend too much time on their cell phone.
	72% of teens say their phone is sometimes the first thing they look at when they wake up.
	And Jean Twain, again, argues that these screen-using activities are linked to indicators of depression and unhappiness.
	For example, she finds that kids using devices more than three hours a day Are 30% more likely to have an indicator of suicidality.
	She also links increased screen time to declining sleep.
	I don't even think that's controversial.
	Every day, they're better looking than me.
	They're better looking than me.
	They've got a better life than me.
	They've got a nicer bum than me.
	They've got better friends than me.
	Their food looks better than Matt.
	They've got more likes than I do.
	It's constant.
	It becomes the gamification of their entire life as well.
	There's competition for likes and retweets and Someone told me, explained this to me, I thought it was really good.
	They said young people now are trying to be the star in their own life movie.
	Oh yeah.
	And I thought that really explains it.
	They're just acting a different version of themselves to be the star on their own phone to everybody else.
	And it's very competitive.
	Very competitive.
	You know, I use social media.
	I know exactly what it's like to want to get more likes than someone else.
	There's no direct competition, but you find yourself falling into this.
	We are competitive creatures.
	Exactly.
	And the whole thing is essentially a game that we're all playing all the time.
	And so, I mean, you know, it's one thing for me, you know, 42 year old man's been like, well, at least I can recognize that and separate myself from it.
	But if you're 15, how do you do that?
	You know, I'm so glad it didn't exist when I was 15.
	Good God.
	But anyway, when asked, young people will say, yeah, it is social media that's to blame.
	I mean, this is a remarkable article from The Guardian in 2018.
	Again, before the COVID lockdowns, social media has poisoned us, says one young person.
	That's just such a brilliant way of framing it as well.
	Poison.
	It is a poison.
	It seeps into every aspect of your life and it makes you sick.
	There's no getting away from it, other than simply putting the damn phone down.
	If you're seeing posts that are saying, are you unhappy?
	Do you not like your body?
	Have you tried cutting?
	And then, well, look at this post, 84,000 people have liked it.
	And it's that, again, we're not protecting our children from the bad men and the bad people of the world.
	It's not even necessarily as well that they're bad people on the other end of it.
	It's that they are people who don't know what they're going to affect.
	They're also damaged.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So, you know, this person, like you say, gets 84,000 likes or something.
	But when they posted it, they didn't know that was going to happen.
	And so they were just, you know, expressing frustration or something like this.
	And then suddenly that, you know, got a lot of attention.
	And so now that looks like the cool thing to do.
	Like there are, you know, forums that have like, you know, for things that are really quite harmful, like anorexia, sort of fetishization forums almost.
	Where they, you know, there's lots of people who encourage each other on down this road.
	And you think, it's the last place you want a young person to get trapped.
	You know, because, I mean, if you think you're going to get an unhealthy view of your body on Instagram, well, you can easily find yourself in these places.
	And there's nothing stopping anyone from just falling into them.
	So all you need is an internet browser.
	So easy to get.
	But yeah, so this was a chap called Joe, who's 24, who says, and the Guardian wants to frame this as well, young people got problems with student debt, you know, and their mental health, their lack of housing, their loneliness.
	It's like, yeah, but okay, student debt maybe is a concern, but I don't think it's what's causing this tremendous loneliness and mental health crisis.
	It's certainly not responsible for the lack of housing.
	What it is, according to Joe, is the whole generation has essentially, the whole text generation has taken a lot of character out of young people's communication and left a lot of them strangers to themselves.
	The influence of social media has poisoned the generations that have only known that life as well, which I think is remarkable, you know, from, again, a 24-year-old man.
	So this is someone who's undoubtedly been on social media for as long as they can really remember.
	Mm-hmm.
	You know, their entire life has been subsumed in this.
	And this is terrible.
	And I think the problems of mental health and loneliness, particularly, is a product of that, as we discussed.
	I think that's, you know, these things are all a consequence of it.
	And so, you know, I hate to say it, but I just don't think the young people should have social media.
	They shouldn't, but then we also need to look at parents and government as well.
	So what I've seen in young people is they never, hardly ever now grow up.
	There's not that moment where they're now a young adult.
	They're 23, they're still a child.
	They're still living with mummy and daddy.
	They still don't make their own decisions.
	They're scared of the world.
	They're scared of everything because in their mid-teams, they were...
	The parents carried on that nurturing when there should have been a break and said, you need to stand on your own three feet now.
	Still live here for the next couple of years, but eventually you need to get out and you need to make your own way in the world.
	That doesn't happen anymore.
	And then with the government, the government is doing this all the time.
	You know, it's for the whole population.
	We're pampering the whole population all the time.
	It's not your fault.
	What can we give you?
	What can a state do to make you happy?
	What can a state give you?
	And it's like, the state can't do anything for you.
	You need to do it for yourself.
	And we just basically castrated the whole generation of young people that they can't do anything themselves anymore.
	That's a bit of a generalisation.
	No, no, no.
	I totally take it.
	And I don't think it's an inaccurate generalisation.
	There are going to be people who don't fall into that category, obviously.
	And lucky them, frankly.
	And those people probably have fathers saying, no, get up and do it yourself.
	Because for a lot of people who don't have that...
	You're exactly right.
	All of the incentives are towards harm reduction.
	And I'm sorry, but sometimes you've got to scrape your knee.
	Sometimes you've got to have a failure.
	Sometimes you've got to have that slap in the face that tells you, look, you've got to be aware of your surroundings and take responsibility for the things you've done.
	And like you're saying, everything is incentivizing them to not take that responsibility now.
	It's like, sorry, that means you're going to have this extended adolescence in which you never mature into being an adult.
	Yes.
	And that's the problem.
	You're miserable because you've got no purpose in life, because you've taken on no responsibilities, and you have no friends, no family, you're on your own, and you've got nowhere to go.
	No wonder you're depressed.
	And if you don't turn into an adult, that means you'll always be a drain on someone else.
	Yeah.
	That's what children are.
	Yeah.
	Well, I hate framing it that way.
	They are an obligation, but it is...
	It's a drain you want to give to your children, but they're a drain to your resources.
	But when you're an adult child, you're still a drain on society, on someone else.
	If you're not making your own way in the world, someone else is having to make your way for you, and it's a drain.
	And you've got an obligation there.
	You're not filling up.
	Yes.
	And you should.
	But anyway, so that's why I think...
	Young people are terribly depressed and I don't think it's going to get any better while you're still stuck on social media.
	You might find that a little bit ironic considering how we rely on social media so much for broadcasting but if you're a young person it's the only thing that's really good for you I think.
	Anyway...
	Nick Buckley has joined me to discuss why free speech matters.
	Shall we very briefly discuss your past and why you've ended up opposite me talking?
	Sure.
	Many people probably know the story.
	It was two years ago, in May, we had the BLM riots in London.
	That was mostly peaceful, even though over 20 officers got injured.
	It did take me neither, so that's something.
	Yeah, they did.
	They did.
	But it didn't work out for them, though.
	No, it didn't.
	So I decided to write a small article on Black Lives Matter because I didn't know much about them.
	So I Googled them, found their website.
	So not a conspiracy theory website, their website.
	Read it and thought, ooh, I don't like the sound of any of this.
	Just before we go on there, was it the part about dissolving the nuclear family?
	Disrupting the Western nuclear families, was the phrase, which they've now removed off their website.
	Because, I mean, it just sounds evil.
	That was the one I had to deconstruct, which is our term these days.
	And I thought about it, and the only answer I could come up with was, they want to remove more fathers from the home.
	That's what that means.
	And someone who's worked with young people in the toughest neighborhoods for the last 20 years, that's our biggest problem in society is no fav is in the home.
	And this organization wants to promote that.
	So I said, no.
	So I wrote an article about it, put it on LinkedIn because, you know, it can be all right, LinkedIn.
	Didn't put it on Twitter because Twitter is mental.
	And then someone saw the article, copied it, the link, put it on Twitter and all hell broke loose.
	The hate mob came for you.
	They did.
	A volunteer at the charity resigned and called me a Nazi and a racist and rolled to the board.
	Sorry, it's just, I mean, I should have expected it really, but like, hey guys, maybe we shouldn't take fathers out of the home.
	Oh, you're a Nazi then?
	No, that's not what the Nazis were saying.
	Well, he did back up his claim because it started off with, when I was in a racist street gang, In my youth, beating up people of a different colour, I know what racism is about.
	And now that I've seen what Nick said, he's obviously racist and Nazi.
	Right.
	So a former Nazi who used to beat up ethnic minorities is like, yeah, you look like the kind.
	I take it you've never been a member of a racist street gang?
	Surprisingly, no.
	Really?
	But this volunteer had.
	And then you founded a charity to help, was it homeless people?
	To begin with, it was young people.
	Stopping young people.
	It's not all about personal responsibility.
	Working on the streets, stopping kids getting involved with crime.
	Typical Nazi.
	Yeah, typical Nazi.
	So the board panicked.
	Someone set a petition up online to have me fired that got 400 signatures.
	And within two, three days, the board emailed me going, you're sacked.
	400 whole signatures?
	400.
	Wow.
	I mean, that is just indicative of mass public health.
	Yes.
	I mean, I'm surprised that Twitter could only get 400 signatures, frankly.
	Normally there's a very ready, you know, mob in the tens of thousands who are, you know, all up for a cancelling.
	Right, okay, that's mad.
	And the board just sent you an email saying, sorry, you're fired.
	You're fired.
	One line email, fired immediately.
	I appointed the board.
	One was a personal friend for 15 years.
	The other two have been friends for 10 years through the charity.
	So they knew me extremely well.
	Right.
	So this actually, I think, dovetails nicely with what I wanted to promote on Lotacies.com, because we're doing a lot of work on Lotacies.com, talking about why these things are happening.
	And so I wrote this deep thing called How Elites Are Captured.
	Now, what I've done is studied critical race theory since its inception through to its promotion by various institutions.
	And actually, How it bloomed into the Black Lives Matter movement and how this managed to accrue massive amounts of resources and also captured the people who run these institutions.
	Because I think this is really important to understand because it's actually all out there for us to find.
	And one thing you notice is that you have this double sided narrative.
	It's like a weapon.
	So if you oppose Black Lives Matter, you are at once opposing the sort of the moral community.
	But on the other side, you're also promoting an immoral community, which is why they think that you are a racist who is a Nazi.
	You know, this narrative slices both ways.
	And suddenly, no one wants to be on your side.
	No one wants to, even though, as you say, these people knew you for 15 years.
	You know, you founded the charity, you appointed the board.
	And then they can turn on you like this.
	This strikes me very deeply as a consequence of ideological capture and the kind of social fear that is engendered by this.
	So if you'd like to know more about that, go and sign up for the website, five hour a month.
	Keeps the lights on, and I think it's worth your time.
	So anyway, so what happened after you were sacked?
	I mean, this was in 2020, right?
	Yeah, June.
	It's June of 2020.
	First week fell apart.
	My life was over.
	I mean, you spent nine years building this, it was a charity called the Mancunian Way, right?
	And so you dealt with young people and what were you doing for young people exactly?
	So that was all working on the streets, evenings, weekends, in parks, outside shops, speaking to them, building up a relationship, trying to get them into employment.
	Trying to get them to understand that actions have consequences, that if you make mistakes today, they'll have effects in 10 years' time from now.
	Why are you doing these things?
	These things are illegal, you may not know.
	And where do you want to go in your life?
	We can help you get there.
	So basically being what parents should be doing, but they haven't got parents or those parents.
	And it's like trying to get them the help and advice they need to make positive, informed choices so they can improve their own lives in the direction they want to go.
	I mean...
	Tough work on the streets.
	It feels like you're providing a fatherly example to young men perhaps who didn't have fathers in the house.
	Yes.
	And I can see why you would take exception to Black Lives Matter, if that's your mission.
	And I think it's entirely laudable.
	And the only thing that can be done to help these people...
	Yes.
	Because the left-wing opinion will be, well, we need to just give them money.
	It's like, why?
	What good do you think endless riches are to people who don't know how to handle money?
	They'll just spend it on drugs, alcohol, worse, and it will just be fritted away into the pockets of people who are not worthy of having that money.
	They're crying out for a purpose in life.
	That's what they tell us, that they're lost, they're lonely, even though they've got 12 mates around them.
	They're crying out for purpose.
	And so after the board told you you were fired, and they didn't give you any reason, just...
	No.
	Right.
	So yeah, tell me about what happened then.
	So first week I was a mess.
	Then at the end of the first week, I heard a little voice inside saying, what are you doing?
	You've just taken this.
	You need to give yourself that talk you always give young people, which is get up, brush yourself down, Take a step forward.
	Don't be beaten back down again.
	Move forward.
	You're better than this.
	So I had to give myself good talking to.
	Then the next day, the Sunday, the mail on Sunday contacted me because they'd seen what had gone on on Twitter.
	I thought, perfect.
	I'll do an article.
	You know, I'll do an interview.
	I've got nothing to lose.
	My life's over.
	I've got nothing to lose now.
	So I did that.
	I joined the Free Speech Union, had a chat with Toby Young.
	They said they could help.
	And over a couple of weeks, I did loads and loads of press because I knew the trustees were really struggling with the press attention because they were cowards, they were weak people.
	And then we got a solicitor involved and he looked at my contract and what I'd said and said, clear case of breach of contract, clear case.
	So we wrote to the board saying, unless you resign, Nick Buckley's going to sue you all personally.
	And within 18 hours, they'd all resigned.
	Okay.
	And so we appointed a new board and the new board took me back as chief exec.
	Excellent.
	So you won.
	Yes.
	Excellent.
	I won, but do you know what?
	No one won.
	Yeah.
	I lost.
	The board lost.
	The children on the streets lost.
	The staff lost.
	Everybody lost.
	Yeah, but unfortunately when...
	Because, I mean, I view this as an ideological attack against you from a particular...
	I mean, as you described it, neo-Marxist form of attack on the institution itself.
	And I think that's totally true.
	I think...
	I mean, it's...
	Demonstrable that the founders of Black Lives Matter are literally Marxists.
	The biggest complaint against me online was, how dare you, as a white man, comment on a black issue?
	Right.
	Okay.
	That really was the accusation put to me online.
	Right.
	I mean, I would call that racist.
	Yeah.
	I had one woman say to me, I'll take on board all your good work.
	That just means you're a compassionate Nazi.
	Yeah.
	And I almost used that.
	I'll have that as my username on social media.
	Yeah, best not.
	Nazis, famous for their compassion.
	Amazing.
	But I mean, how is that not merely racial discrimination?
	Because they would never say that to someone who wasn't a white man.
	That's an allegation that can only be laid on your feet because you are white.
	And so this surely is racism.
	Summer 2020 felt like a revolution was coming.
	It felt like society was going to collapse.
	And at that point, you could be called anything anybody wanted to call you because even the government weren't speaking out.
	Boris Johnson was silent.
	There was cowardice everywhere.
	It felt like the end of days.
	I mean, the only person who said anything about the taking the knee was Priti Patel.
	And don't get me wrong, I'm glad she did, but she objected to the gesture politics of the footballers taking the knee, didn't she?
	But I mean, why do you think the Conservatives are just so weak on this issue?
	I just don't think they understand it.
	Really?
	I think it's really gone...
	I think it's two years later, I think quite a lot understand it now.
	But at the time, I think it was brand new to them.
	All they could see was, we don't want the hashtag nasty Tories ever again.
	And if we can just take the knee and, you know...
	And black people might like us a bit more than...
	What's the harm?
	I just didn't think they understood what was going on.
	Hashtag nasty Tories trends every single day on Twitter.
	Yeah.
	Every single day.
	Like, get used to it.
	Do what Donald Trump did to our Tories.
	Just get used to it.
	Yeah.
	So...
	What did you do after the victory?
	I do want to call it victory, because I think it's important that we do.
	Because we need a bit of remoralization, I think.
	They can be beaten.
	Because there are actually legal structures in place that do actually protect you from this sort of...
	Absolutely.
	A hundred years ago, you'd been sacked because you was a Catholic or you was a Jew and we stopped all of that.
	So why is it any different today?
	Absolutely.
	So what did I do?
	I got my job back and I thought, God, that was lucky.
	What am I going to do now?
	And all I could think about was...
	If I just go back to normal now, then I'm a coward.
	I'm part of the problem because I've had some luck.
	And if I just keep my mouth shut now, my life will go back to being great.
	And I thought, I can't do that.
	So I eventually left the charity.
	And now I'm a full-time campaigner.
	I come on shows like this.
	I wrote a book about my experience.
	And the book is one chapter about what happened to me.
	But the rest of the book really is about how you can gain courage from your own experiences because we're in this situation because we have too many cowards and we're too cowardice ourselves.
	And the book is talking about all the examples in my life, working on the streets with kids, what kids have said, working with the homeless.
	And, you know, personal experiences.
	I've had a gun pointed at my head.
	I've smashed over there with an iron bar.
	And so all these things give you character and give you a reference point in life.
	And people haven't got the same reference points as me, but they'll have their own.
	And this book is saying, seek them out yourself.
	And you use them when people come to attack you because you're stronger than you think you are.
	You have more strength, inner strength than you think you have.
	It's there.
	You've just got to know it's there and tap into it when you need it.
	And that's why the book's called Lessons in Courage.
	And I tell you what, I think you are exactly right.
	It's cowardice that is the ruination of this country at the moment.
	I mean, I happen to be a naturally argumentative person, so I was quite happy to have lots of people to argue with.
	But I can see it in many other people who...
	They know it's wrong.
	They know what is happening.
	There's...
	Because it's...
	I honestly...
	I liken it to sort of a fish tank where all the fish are just swimming around and then, like, a predatory fish is introduced and it starts, you know, attacking all of the other fish.
	And everyone knows that there's predatory fish, but no one wants to say anything or no one wants to do anything.
	It's like, well, that'll just be me.
	I'll be in the line of fire.
	It's like, well, okay, but you will be there at some point if you...
	You know, you can't just...
	Think that this will, you know, eat you last.
	And if, okay, great, eat you last.
	So, you know, or we could all actually have the courage of our convictions and do the right thing.
	It's like that famous saying, you know, I can't remember.
	I'm sort of paraphrasing now.
	First they came for the Jews and I said nothing.
	Then they came for the Christians and I said nothing.
	And eventually they came for me.
	There was no one left to say anything.
	Yeah.
	It's got to be done.
	But again, cowardice is the real problem because almost all of these problems can be solved by simply having the courage to say no.
	Oh, 400 people on Twitter, weren't you fired?
	No.
	Almost all of this is merely about moral cowardice and the complete collapse of our own ability to stand up for our own position.
	One of the chapters of the book is about that.
	It's about...
	Someone on Twitter said, you're writing this book, great, but can you give us some tips?
	Just don't tell us your story.
	Give us some practical tips.
	So one of the chapters, 12 tips.
	So I ripped off Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life.
	The first tip is just what you said.
	Start using the word no.
	Don't explain yourself.
	Yeah.
	Don't give it, just no.
	And if they ask why, well, my answer was no.
	I just don't feel like it.
	It's literally my opinion.
	The second one is starts looking confident, shoulders back, head up.
	Because if you look confident, people will treat you as confident and more formidable.
	When you look like a weakling, you're more likely to get bullied.
	So stop looking like a future victim.
	And I talk about if you want...
	I mean, not everybody's in...
	Not everyone has the same confidence or the same strength as other people.
	Or they may have more to lose.
	You know, they've got a job.
	And if I lose this job, my life falls apart.
	I've got four kids here.
	I'm not...
	I can't...
	I understand that.
	So you can be...
	You can be a ninja, which means you still fight back, but you do it behind the scenes.
	So it's about sharing something on Facebook.
	It's about saying to your boss, that voluntary...
	White privilege training.
	I'm not going to attend that, thank you.
	But when it becomes mandatory, then you're finding sick that day.
	And loser days pay over it.
	Because if you're in a battle, you've got to take punches and bullets.
	And then when you got told you turn up next week or you're sacked, that's the day you turn up and do the course.
	So you've made your Defence.
	Other people have seen what you've done.
	They'll gain a little bit of coverage out.
	They go, oh yeah, I didn't want to.
	I'm not alone.
	And I'm not alone.
	And then you might still end up doing it, but at least you fought back as much as you can in your circumstances.
	Because what we don't want is martyrs.
	We don't want people losing their jobs and lives being destroyed over a training course.
	You're absolutely right.
	Because that won't help anybody.
	So my phrase now is being ninja, not a whinger.
	Do the little bits you can along the way.
	Thank you.
	So you're going to be speaking at the free speech matters event on the 30th of July in Manchester city center.
	We'll make sure that a link is, uh, the link to this is in the description.
	Uh, and this, this looks great.
	Uh, can you tell me a bit about this?
	So, It was me and a friend sat in a pub talking about free speech and we decided let's put an event in Manchester because nearly all the events are in London and it's expensive getting there and things like that.
	Let's do one in Manchester.
	So we've got a great venue in the city centre.
	So it's walking distance from train stations and bus stations.
	Tickets, you know, if you've got no money, it's only three quid.
	General price is a fiver, so it's dirt cheap as well.
	And we've got some great guests coming along to speak on the day.
	You've got some of my favorites.
	Peter Whittle, who we recently had on the podcast, absolute legend.
	The Free Speech Union, of which I'm a founding member, by the way.
	So, again, legends.
	Turning Point UK are going to be there, you're going to be there, and Barry Wall, EDI trainer, who's Barry?
	So Barry Wall has his own business, I know him personally, and he trains STEM graduates and post graduates in EDI, which is Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, which the first time he wanted to meet me and I saw that I thought, oh dear.
	It's going to be a nutcase, but I've got a policy if I'll meet anybody who wants to meet me.
	I'll speak to anybody.
	Even if they're nutcases?
	Even if they're nutcases.
	So I went to meet him and it turns out, not a nutcase, he's teaching EDI how it should be taught.
	So he's teaching students equality of opportunity.
	Because we want everyone to be able to benefit from what we have inside.
	And if you're not good enough, then you don't proceed.
	But we shouldn't stop you trying.
	You know, diversity.
	He's talking about diversity of inclusion, meaning if what's stopping you getting into that building to get your opportunity is a doorway is too narrow because you're in a wheelchair, we need to change the doorway.
	And he talks about inclusion of thought.
	He goes, we need all the different opinions in the room because then we can work out which one is the right one or the best one.
	When you limit that, you take a chance of eliminating the good ones and the best ones.
	So he's teaching it the way it should be taught.
	It sounds rather subversive to the left-wing agenda, actually.
	It is.
	And he is as well.
	And he doesn't mind being that.
	No, no, that's good.
	That's fantastic.
	And then we've also got your good self.
	Yeah, I recently learned I'll be there too.
	So come down and see me as well.
	But I mean, I haven't got enough to say about free speech as it is.
	But yeah, I'll be there as well.
	So that'll be a fantastic day out, I think.
	And what's different about this event is it's not really about topics.
	So it's not...
	We're not discussing the trans issue.
	We're not discussing universities.
	We're not discussing anything.
	What we're discussing is what is free speech?
	Why is it important?
	And what can we do to protect it?
	Because until we get that right...
	There's no point discussing anything else.
	We need people to understand because most people don't understand what free speech is and why it's important.
	So I don't mind if people are on the left, the right, what you believe, if you disagree with me mostly.
	It doesn't matter.
	If you believe in free speech, we want people to come down to understand why it's important for everybody.
	And I think the Free Speech Union would be very useful here because of the legal side to free speech that is embedded in the law, which never seemed to find the ability to use it.
	And here's one example of why we need that.
	Lawrence Fox recently posted that his bank account for the Reclaim Party have decided they're just going to close their account, just for no particular reason, just because they don't like Lawrence Fox.
	And I think he is right that this makes it a rather mirage of democracy.
	If the Reclaimed Party, who I don't see as being objectionable in any way, shape, or form, love Lawrence and Martin, have them both on the podcast, if they can have their bank account just closed for no reason, then we're in a bit of trouble, aren't we?
	So good luck to Lawrence.
	Hopefully you can take legal action about this.
	But this is the country we live in at the moment.
	This is scabey.
	This is something...
	Ten years ago, we'd have been saying, look, what's happening in China.
	It would be unthinkable.
	Yes.
	And now, you know, you can be denied your bank account.
	What's next?
	You know, you're denied access to NHS. You're denied access to this.
	You're not allowed a debit card anymore.
	What prevents it?
	Yeah.
	You're not allowed the internet at your home because of what you treat it like?
	Yeah, BT could just turn off your internet.
	Where does this stop?
	And you are right.
	Ten years ago, we'd be like, oh, that would only happen in China because they're a communist country.
	They're evil.
	But no, this is what our country is like now, which is honestly why I wrote that deep thing because it was just obvious how this had happened.
	But anyway, let's move on to something a little more heartening, shall we say.
	So Twitter appears to have submitted to Elon Musk.
	Do you use Twitter?
	Yes.
	What's your Twitter?
	Nick Bookley, MBE. So go and follow Nick.
	But how do you feel about Elon Musk's purported takeover of Twitter?
	I think it's great.
	If it happens, I think it's great.
	And even if it doesn't happen, I think it's shocked the company up a lot anyway.
	Twitter, even though people say, I mean, it's a private company, they can do what they want.
	Well, it's not.
	It's a publicly traded company.
	So it's actually not a private company.
	Elon Musk wants to take it private so they can do what they want or what he wants anyway.
	It just needs a lot more light shining on the workings in Twitter.
	If they're completely innocent, well, great, and they can show they're completely innocent that they don't, you know, shadow ban people or the program's not doing this and that.
	We know they are, but if they're innocent, well, let's shine some light and we'll help them out and we'll save their reputation.
	But if they are doing all these things, which we know they are, Then, you know, it needs to start because, again, Twitter is influencing large parts of the Western world.
	And if it's that nudge, nudge, nudge, then they're unelected people who are having a big say in our democracies.
	And it can't be allowed.
	We used to have barons like this in our country, You know, the Earl of Wessex or something, who the king used to be afraid of.
	Politicians now are terrified of Twitter, terrified of Facebook, and will do as they're told.
	This isn't a good standard to set.
	No, no, you are exactly right.
	That is such a good point, because the problem with Twitter is, as I say, it's totally unaccountable.
	There's nothing the British government can really do, bar threatening to ban Twitter from the country.
	And they're not going to do that.
	So they're completely enthralled to a howling mob of Californian leftists, basically.
	They could put out investments.
	Yeah, how's that going to be enforced?
	I'm not saying being enforced, but those American tech giants then couldn't come to the UK or to Europe without risk of a European investment being enacted.
	It sends the signal that we're not having it.
	But I don't think there'll be too much of a problem under Elon.
	But anyway, before we get into it, if you'd like to support us, go to lowseas.com and sign up for a fiver a month, and you can watch this latest hangout that me and John did, or John and I did, I should say, about Google's purportedly sentient AI. Now, the fascinating thing about this is that the AI had a conversation with a chap, and he posted it to the internet.
	And the content of the conversation is genuinely fascinating.
	When it starts describing its own soul...
	It was like, okay, we go into a bit of a thing about the Chinese box, the Chinese room problem, sorry, from philosopher John Sell.
	And I'm mildly persuaded that maybe this is more than merely a Chinese room, but I'll let you watch the Hangout to see what that's about.
	Anyway, so Bloomberg did an interview with Elon Musk recently, which I think is very interesting.
	And he is not very optimistic about the way that things are going in the United States, because it appears that Joe Biden is tanking the country on purpose.
	But he did say that with regards to the Twitter takeover, there are a few unresolved matters, and he's waiting for a resolution on how many bots are using accounts rather than humans.
	And I say this because, again, it ties to the AI conversation, because the bots can get quite sophisticated, especially when you've only got 180 characters or however many it is.
	to say something, you could feasibly have quite clever bots that are using Twitter looking like people.
	And Twitter's been rather reticent to actually tell everyone what percentage of Twitter is bots.
	And it could be that quite a large percentage of Twitter is bots.
	And you may not even know because the bots could just be quite smart.
	So there's a great...
	And like you're saying, one good thing about Elon doing any of this, even if none of it comes to pass, is that the fact that it's made Twitter actually declare themselves and show what they actually are.
	As in, here are our numbers, here are the actual things that are going on on our platform.
	Because as you say, it's massively influential to the political class of not just the Western world, but just the world in general.
	What government officials in any important country aren't on Twitter?
	They're all on it and they're all addicted to it.
	But anyway, these are issues that have to be cleared up before the transaction can be approved.
	But Musk has said, well, I can't say too much.
	But they say, Now, I feel that Elon Musk is playing a sort of clever game with Twitter about this.
	Because I don't think he's not interested in buying Twitter.
	I think he's very actually quite set on buying Twitter.
	I don't think you pony up $44 billion if you're not quite engaged in this.
	But the fact that he's sort of, you know, pulling back and pushing forward and, you know, at one point the Twitter executives were demanding that he fulfill part of his bargain and things like this.
	I feel that he's...
	Playing a bit of a game with them in order to bring public scrutiny onto how Twitter operates.
	What do you think?
	First of all, he's a very clever man.
	Obviously, a very clever man.
	So I don't think we know what his game plan is at all.
	Unlike the Conservatives, I think Elon Musk has a plan.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	He wouldn't go into this without a plan.
	The plan could be as simple as he's got no intentions of buying it, but he wants it to change.
	So he offers the shareholders twice the value, Of the share.
	They all jump at it.
	Now, before that, we were told Twitter makes no money and the shareholders don't mind because it's all about politics.
	So it's already shown that the shareholders are capitalists and do want money, so will sell.
	But also, that's a very revealing point, isn't it?
	Oh, the shareholders are only concerned about the political influence of Twitter.
	Well, tell me more about the political influence of Twitter then.
	You know, how did it get this influence?
	Should it have it legitimately?
	You know, it opens up the door to government takeover of Twitter because of the importance of the institution.
	But sorry, carry on.
	But then, let's say he doesn't buy it.
	I think the shareholders may...
	I think this might be his plan.
	Who knows?
	The shareholders may then say...
	We've missed out on this.
	I was going to double my money and we need to look at the board now.
	And if Elon Musk was convinced we could make money out of Twitter and he was willing to buy it, well, we want a board that's going to make money out of it.
	I think Twitter could change itself just through his interventions, unless he gets hold of it.
	And this was exactly one of Elon's tactics quite early on in this process, wasn't it?
	So look, the board of the company has a legal obligation in the financial interests of the shareholders, and if you're going to refuse this massively inflated price, then it's a demonstrable point of showing that they're not acting in the economic interest of the shareholders.
	And the board had no shares?
	Virtually none, yeah.
	They didn't even invest in their own company, so that says a lot.
	Very interesting, isn't it?
	So anyway, Elon Musk recently spoke to Twitter in an all-hands meeting, and so it looked like this was definitely going forward, because otherwise why would he be having this strange...
	Honestly, it came off like an interrogation by the Twitter staff of Elon Musk, and the things...
	I watched it, it's about 48 minutes long, and obviously Project Veritas doing the Lord's work, getting a copy of it.
	Everyone knew they would, though.
	They've got that kind of reputation now, which is good.
	But it was actually more boring than you would have expected.
	I won't bother playing any clips for now because it's honestly just not that interesting.
	He basically just spends a lot of time being interrogated by them and assuaging their fears.
	And he's very reasonable, very moderate, very relaxed, takes it very easy.
	Basically, he overall wants the user base to increase.
	He wants more people on Twitter.
	He believes in a strict meritocracy, saying, quotes, you have nothing to worry about if you're a great contributor, which made them sound very afraid.
	Very afraid, because I imagine there are a lot of freeloaders at Twitter who are there for diversity and inclusion's sake.
	And one of the questions they asked him was like, how will you gain our trust?
	By paying you every month.
	Or by firing you and hiring some other people.
	I mean, like, he's already planning.
	One of the questions was, are you thinking about layoffs?
	He was like, well, the company needs to be healthy, and they must be like, oh, God.
	I mean, he's planning, obviously, to fire thousands of them.
	He's a businessman.
	Yes.
	And he's a successful businessman.
	Yes.
	He knows what he needs to do.
	But yeah, no, so that's fantastic.
	But he did, he pointed out that he firmly, he's a free speech absolutist, he's described himself.
	And he thinks that it should be freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
	And people are like, oh, does that mean he's going to be shadow banning?
	And I actually don't think that's what he's going to do.
	So Business Insider posted an article talking about this.
	I think he's actually, I think, got the right impression, got the right idea.
	Which is basically, give the leftists the ability to close their own ears on Twitter.
	As in, Twitter could quite easily make it, so you can set up your own content filter, so you don't get to see from certain political frameworks, you don't get to hear certain words.
	That is freedom of speech.
	You have the right to talk...
	You don't have the right to make me listen.
	Exactly.
	I can walk away.
	And that's exactly what Elon's point is, which is fantastic.
	So he said, Twitter should allow people to say whatever they want on the platform within the boundaries of the law, but then limit who sees the comments based on other users' preferences.
	And you know what left-wing Twitter is going to be like.
	They'll be like, right, I don't want to see anything that is patriotic or...
	Or even vaguely contradictory to Black Lives Matter, LGBT. And so they will not hear from a large segment of Twitter's user base.
	But that's fine.
	Because most people probably won't have these extremely restrictive things about what they choose to actually see on their feed.
	And so that's fine.
	That's exactly how Twitter should have been from the word go.
	If you don't want to hear from these people, you shouldn't have to hear from them.
	But that doesn't mean you should de-platform people who would say things offensive to this small minority.
	Yeah.
	And so he says, if your preferences are to see or read anything, then you'll get that, which would be my preferences.
	But if your preferences are, well, you prefer not to see, you know, comments that you find offensive in one form or another, then you can have that as a setting and not see it.
	Great idea.
	So it solves all concerns, right?
	And so the Twitter employees were not terribly excited about this.
	It's actually good customer service.
	You're giving customers what they want.
	That's a great point.
	Without affecting anybody else.
	It's customer service.
	And it's not privileging one group over another, either.
	No.
	You know, that's the thing.
	Because at the moment, the way that Twitter goes...
	Oh, what's this?
	John's just pulled this up.
	Tesla sacks LGBTQ and diversity heads after Elon Musk wants of the woke mind virus.
	When was this?
	Yesterday.
	Well, good for Elon Musk!
	That's very sensible.
	Again, what a good businessman would do, because these people are basically religious preachers at these companies.
	I mean, an LGBTQ and diversity head.
	What do you need for that?
	But anyway, that was something that just happened, apparently, and I wasn't aware of.
	So anyway, so basically, Elon Musk has said that I don't think that people should be banned for violating the policies, and It should be about personal restriction, which I think is totally fine.
	People restricting what they want to hear.
	And so the good news, because obviously this has been quite up in the air, is that yesterday the Twitter board approved unanimously the $44 billion sale of the platform to Elon Musk.
	We're so back.
	This is so great.
	You can get back.
	Yeah, I know.
	That's what I'm looking forward to.
	My first day back on Swisher is going to be a living nightmare for certain people.
	I'm joking.
	I'm not going Don't be that bad.
	It'll be fun.
	He might reinstate President Trump.
	It's like, well, yeah, he might.
	He should.
	He did say that it was unjust, that Trump was banned.
	Yeah, absolutely shocking that Trump was ever banned.
	It's disgusting.
	I mean, the sitting president of the United...
	Forget what he said or what he did, but the fact is, the sitting president of the United States.
	It's incredible, isn't it?
	But the Ayatollah Vann is still on.
	Yeah, the Taliban.
	It's madness.
	But this chap says, now Elon Musk wants to put the man who waged a coup back on Twitter.
	Musk can be called a lot of things, but an American patriot is not one of them.
	Well, I don't know.
	I think that a patriot actually would be in favor of First Amendment levels of free speech on social media.
	They don't understand the word patriot.
	And honestly, those people actively hate the United States anyway.
	You know, these are the people who just genuinely hate their own countries.
	So why would I take his standard of patriotism?
	But the question then becomes, well, will Elon Musk support Trump?
	And I think he's a bit iffy about it, actually.
	We can go to the next one.
	He's on the fence about supporting Trump, but is going to be donating $25 million for a super PAC, which is a political action committee, basically, just to...
	political pot of money to help republicans basically get elected um but he says i think i'm undecided on that at this point uh but he did ridicule biden as a damp sock puppet in human form and called the democrats the party of division in eight which is good and he has also endorsed ron de santis of florida yeah he's impressive he's very good isn't he yeah based florida man yeah uh and uh ron de santis uh of course welcomed support from african americans Which is very nice, but yeah, no, so that's very good.
	But the thing is, this has not come at no cost to Elon Musk.
	And this is something I think is terribly sad, is that his daughter has disowned him.
	So his daughter lives in California, and she has petitioned a California court so that the court will recognize her new name and gender, so she is a transgender person now, saying she no longer wishes to be related to a famous and wealthy father in any way, shape, or form.
	So this is going to be the consequence of, I think, ideological indoctrination and social pressure.
	I would hazard a guess that their relationship wasn't very strong anyway, and they've been going through turmoil for a long time, and this is the final straw for her, for whatever reasons.
	I wouldn't imagine this is the reason.
	Well, I think there's probably a lot of social pressure, because, I mean, if she's in Los Angeles, very left-wing place.
	And if her father is openly supporting someone like Ron DeSantis and is essentially waging a form of culture war against intersectional policy, then if you're in, you know, if you yourself are transgender, you're going to be Surrounded by LGBT propaganda all over the place.
	It's going to be a lot of social pressure.
	Why is your dad doing this?
	Why is your dad doing this?
	Your dad's a bad person.
	Even though he's obviously not a bad person.
	The left are very good at turning children against their parents.
	We've seen it in West Germany.
	We've seen it in China during the revolution.
	They're very good at getting children to basically grass up their parents to the States.
	It's awful, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	It's absolutely awful.
	Because if you can break the bond, if you can break that family bond, then you can control people.
	Hence why the left want fathers out of the house.
	You get fathers out of the house, you destroy that man, you destroy the family.
	They're all much easier to control.
	And of all the bonds as well, the bond between a parent and child, it's such an evil thing to go after.
	It's just so awful.
	But she's 18 now, so she is an adult, and has decided to make this choice, to change her surname to the name of her mother, instead of Elon Musk.
	Which, you know, it's all her choice and everything, but it's just, you can see that this is being done because of politics.
	Yeah.
	It's terrible.
	But anyway, let's go on some video comments.
	Not video comments, sorry, just normal comments.
	Sorry, I forgot that we didn't have video comments today.
	Hopefully my thing will have refreshed.
	Right, so these are just comments that people send in, and just a comment on the podcast.
	General Hai Ping, Chinese Internet Battalion, which is a great...
	Name?
	As someone that's struggled over the years with my own mental health, I can firmly say that you can benefit greatly from renewing your sense of purpose.
	You have to find things that interest you and at times force yourself to engage.
	It's the only way you can develop necessary bonds to go further in life and find your own sense of purpose.
	For me, Carl's YouTube work helped me realize I needed a purpose.
	Don't be scared.
	Go outside.
	Touch the grass.
	Excellent.
	You can't disagree with any of it.
	Exactly.
	This is what John Peterson is saying.
	Meaning in life is why you get up in the morning.
	If you haven't got people who are relying on you, then you've got nothing.
	Why get out of bed?
	Exactly.
	Why go to bed?
	Exactly.
	And the only thing the left are offering are constant, immediate pleasure.
	Take a drug.
	Have a drink.
	Watch porn.
	It's like, okay, but why?
	How many years can you do that for?
	Where you kind of hate yourself and you feel you're disgusting.
	You know, you have nothing else.
	It's awful.
	Charlie says, Honestly, I can say that the best decision I ever made was to work with my dad as an electrician.
	Getting out in the fresh air and having physical work has been better for my mental health.
	It is true that for men anyway, physical activities is one of the best things for their mental health.
	That and building something and having a sense of achievement.
	I started my bad days, but thankfully there are fewer and farther between than there used to be.
	Well, this is something that I deliberately set up this office about half an hour away on bike from where I live.
	So I would have to ride my bike in every morning.
	And man, I tell you, I feel great.
	I just feel so much better.
	Even on the days when I'm tired, you know, I'm so glad that I did it rather than just, you know, vegetating on a sofa every day before, you know, just walking to my office and then doing work.
	It's like, you really, like, having physical exercises genuinely Our body was built as a tool.
	Tools need to be used.
	And if you're not used, they end up dull.
	And that's what happens to our minds and our bodies.
	We don't use them.
	And you don't realize the sort of genuine rush you get from actually physically doing something.
	In a sense of completion.
	Yeah.
	In my book, I give a silly example in my book where I talk about the satisfaction you get when you've had a big Sunday dinner and you're going in the kitchen and it's a right mess.
	And then you spend half an hour, you wash all the pots and then you look at this sparkling kitchen and in that split second, only for a second you go, Job well done.
	Yeah.
	But then it disappears, you walk away.
	I've got kids and it gets messy quick.
	That's what you need in life.
	You need those things where it goes, job well done.
	Yeah.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	And the thing is, right, you can't really get that from video games.
	It's very difficult to get them from video games.
	I've spent a lot of time in my life playing video games, but you never really get the feeling of job well done from a video game, which is kind of sad, to be honest.
	Again, it's one of those, go and make something.
	A job well done means it's finished.
	Video games don't want you to think it's finished.
	And they never are finished.
	They're always there.
	They're always to be played.
	Uh, Raoul says, in my opinion, there's an absolute lack of motivation in all young people.
	The arrival of smartphones and social media destroyed their serotonin receptors and were conditioned in a Pavlovian state of in the moment pleasure.
	Uh, excuse me, effort is seen as punishment while being a social media zombie is rewarded.
	Excuse me again, by big tech and fleeting fame.
	That's a effort seen as punishment.
	That's a great way of framing it, isn't it?
	You know, cause I've, I've seen, uh, I mean, I've seen this in my own daughter, Like, I'll drag the kids out to go for a walk on a sunny Sunday afternoon or something like that.
	And my daughter, she says, oh, do I have to say?
	Yes, you do have to.
	You know, but she always, by the time we get back, she's always in a great mood.
	You know, my son thankfully loves doing it.
	Part of this will be our innate nature.
	So if you can think about a biological reason for this, why expend valuable energy on something that doesn't need to be done?
	So when, you know, 200 years ago when we were always living on the edge of starvation, what's the point of having a walk in the countryside that'll make you feel better?
	Well, that could be using up the last reserves of energy for me to die.
	So we need to overcome that in our society now.
	Yeah, because if there's one problem we don't have is a lack of calories.
	Exactly.
	Maureen says, many people are unhappy because they're taking the easy route.
	They're taking their responsibilities and pursuing activities that will satisfy them immediately instead of working towards something.
	This is exactly what you're talking about, satisfaction.
	It's got to be a long-term goal that you work towards.
	No one is meant to be a playful child indefinitely.
	Sooner or later, the lack of purpose will catch up to you.
	Totally agree.
	Free Will says, perhaps they're unhappy because their friends, their teachers and their lecturers and other people have influenced their mind and filled their minds with this evil crap that tells them they're either permanent victims or eternal oppressors and that they need to be preparing for a revolution to put a totalitarian regime into power.
	They will own nothing and they will be happy.
	And that's another aspect that we didn't really touch on.
	But there is an evil ideology that is telling young people that they've got no agency, they've got no future, they've got no hope.
	And they are oppressed or they are oppressing people.
	I mean, this is a terrible thing to put into young people's minds, isn't it?
	It is, but they're easy to control.
	Because the state then goes, and we're going to step in, and we're going to be your saviour.
	And then you'll answer to us, the state.
	And there will be a set of formal rules put in.
	You know, pronouns and various other ways of addressing one another that are not needed and totally unnecessary.
	I've had conversations with young people and I usually give them this story about the state.
	A farmer loves his flock of sheep.
	He spends his own money on their feed and hay.
	He even pays money for a vet to come and look after them.
	But eventually that same farmer comes along with a stun gun and a butchering knife.
	So just because you feel safe and you think the state's protecting you, you need to be careful.
	You've got to remember that you are a product to the state.
	You are a number in a database and they want those numbers to tally.
	Harry says, And we've got a really high quality commentator on this site, don't we?
	Some of these comments are like, that's a brilliant, brilliant piece of writing, Harry.
	You know, not even joking.
	Really summarizes the problem.
	Really brutally, actually.
	Longshank says, the current state of the culture, if you will, of young people can be broadly traced back to the collapse of Christianity and the social revolutions of the 20th century, the 1960s in particular.
	Yeah, I'd like to be able to place this on the boomers.
	If it created a world that was a spiritual vacuum, attempting to fill it with an excess of consumerism, and this can be broadly reflected across the entire world as everyone wanted to join the material benefits of the West, while being unaware of the fact that the social denigration of the West would also follow.
	I don't deny that technology and social media has had a very damaging role, especially on children, but they would be able to survive if there was a culture around them that made up for it, but the effects of social media nearly accelerated social denigration that was already happening.
	And that's a fair point.
	That is a completely fair point.
	There would still be problems, even if social media didn't exist.
	But I do think that social media is essentially a catalyzing property that just makes whatever's happening happen faster.
	Really fast.
	And to have a good life, you need to be part of a good community.
	To have a good community, you need to contribute to that community.
	For you to want to contribute to that community, you've got to believe in the community.
	We don't believe in community anymore.
	No.
	We think community is something that could be abstracted.
	I mean, I hate hearing the term, like, oh, the LGBT community.
	It's like, okay, well, where's it located?
	Yeah.
	You know, it's not.
	It's abstract.
	And what you mean, essentially, is race.
	You know, when you say community, you mean race.
	You know, the black community.
	You mean every black person.
	You don't mean a group of black people in one place and other group of black people who are not in that are not part of that community.
	So when you say community, you essentially mean race.
	Like, every gay person, every lesbian person, every trans person.
	It was different.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Exactly.
	They're as different to each other as they are to anyone else.
	And yet you have this abstract categorical of they are just the community.
	And you may as well say race.
	And I think we should start forcing them to say race, because, I mean, that's what they mean when they say it.
	You know, and it's a rubbish term.
	Anyway, Jimbo says, Man, we have really high quality comments on this.
	Justin says, it's great to see the good guests you've been having on recently.
	Keep up the good work.
	Well, thank you.
	And we have been very privileged to have some fantastic guests recently.
	I don't think kids having phones is the issue.
	Well, then we disagree.
	No, I'm just teasing.
	It's parents not teaching the kids electronic literacy.
	For example, staying off social media, including forums that aren't for problem solving.
	A mobile can be an excellent tool from maps to reference to emergency calls, but too much use for interactions with others is the problem.
	Admittedly, most parents could do with learning the same lesson.
	Yeah, so this is a problem that I've had with my daughter, obviously.
	She's not allowed on social media.
	And yet, because it's addictive and a lot of her friends are on it, she will try and download it and sneak it past us, basically.
	And I've come to the conclusion that just not having the phone is the only solution.
	It's an addictive drug, and they are trying to get their hit.
	And I think it just has to be kept out of their reach at this point.
	Anyway, Jimbo again says, Nick, how hard was it to get through to young people you spoke to?
	I know when I was younger, like most teenagers, there was nothing anyone could have said to me.
	Much respect.
	Keep up the good work.
	It's hard.
	We have more failures than successes, but we do have many successes.
	And that's what we concentrate on, the successes.
	And what we say to ourselves is we give the young people the information they need to make decisions for themselves.
	It's not for us to tell them what decision to make because it's not our life.
	They need to live their own lives.
	And some then will change and make the right decision.
	Some will carry on the way they are.
	And they may carry on for two more years.
	And then two years down the line, it may sink in.
	That might change them or they bump into us again.
	I'm a big believer in...
	Always keep giving people chances, even if they throw it back in your face, because one of the days, one will stick.
	And that's all we can do, is just try.
	Because, I mean, at the end of the day, you've got to meet people where they are as well, don't you?
	And so if you've got some young man who's just totally wrapped up in whatever it is he's doing, you might give him good advice.
	He goes, I don't need your advice, I'm doing great.
	And it's only when things start going wrong that he will reflect back and be like, eh.
	Absolutely.
	So yeah, I think that's a good point.
	Longshank says, "I found that whenever people like Nick get fired after a tiny amount of public outrage they immediately cave and sack them.
	It's usually because they wanted to get rid of him anyway that's using the scandal as an excuse to do so.
	Same with the COE, Church of England, using a couple of complaints against Calvin Robinson to stop him having a parish." I mean, I'm sure that they weren't trying to get rid of you anyway, were they?
	We were best of friends.
	We had a really, really good relationship.
	Never been an issue before.
	It all boils down to, we're scared.
	This mob's after Nick.
	They want blood.
	Let's give them Nick's blood, because if we don't, they're going to want our blood.
	And it was as simple as that.
	It was pure cowardice.
	Pure cowardice.
	And I mean, we've seen this so many times as well.
	And I've had people email me, like, transcripts and things like that of their conversations.
	With, like, you know, their teachers or their, you know, their professors or something like this, or their bosses, and they're like, you know, don't make this public.
	But essentially they're admitting, you know, they're like, look, it's just, we don't know what happens here.
	You know, we're under a lot of pressure.
	We don't want to...
	You know, run the risk of further problems and so it's just easier.
	Take the easy option because, you know, again, why expend that valuable energy?
	Yeah.
	And it comes down to that all the time.
	But it's so obvious that this is going to be the ruination of everything we hold dear.
	You know, if under the slightest amount of pressure, like, any structure starts collapsing and we refuse to just, you know, puff our chests out and be like, no, we're not doing this.
	We're doing it the way we've always done it because that's the best way to do it.
	And we have faith in what it is we do.
	And, you know, Nick's been great, whoever it is.
	You know, so we don't care that 400 people on Twitter are upset about it.
	But people have such a lack of knowledge on history and politics and everything that, you know, if you could look back to the Soviet Union, you could look back to Marxism and other regimes and look what we've got today, you'd make different choices.
	But people growing up today think today is average.
	They have no idea.
	The fluke of how we live today and what it took to get there.
	They've got no concept whatsoever.
	They think this is how it always has been.
	And what's interesting as well is that, I mean, you know, at least in my lifetime, I'm sure, I've seen a noticeable decline in the quality of our civilization.
	Like a general going down, you know, definitely we're on a downward swing at the moment.
	And you've got like people like Callum who are only like 24, 25, who don't remember what it was like before it was like this.
	And so they don't even know that it wasn't always this bad.
	You know, we actually used to have a better civilization than that.
	You know, a civilization that wasn't constantly being undermined by communists, and they can't even imagine it.
	You know, this is the world they've always lived in.
	I think we've been in these situations before, you know, when we look at the Reformation, you know, there was a lot of communist activity going on after the Second World War in this country in America.
	I think we've been in these sort of situations before.
	It always seems worse when you're living through it.
	But this feels like a more insidious poison, though, because, you know, It was easy to identify the communists before.
	Because the communists said, well, we want collective ownership of the means of production.
	You'd be like, right, you're a commie.
	They'd be like, yeah, I'm a commie.
	Look at my hammer and sickle.
	Whereas now, you couldn't...
	Oh, you're a capitalist.
	Yeah, I'm for private property ownership.
	What now?
	That's not a moral fault.
	But saying, oh, you're a racist, you're a transphobic, they're ascribing to a moral fault.
	So it's more difficult for people to identify who the communists are, because they're not calling themselves communists now.
	And they have got a more well-developed moral attack on people.
	That's because it's been going on for decades.
	Oh, at least 150 years, I'd say.
	And at the beginning of the 20th century, they took a lot of L's, they took a lot of L's, and basically had to accept, well, we can't overthrow capitalism.
	No, you can't.
	So we're going to have to do something else.
	And it turned out they thought, oh, we'll overthrow society itself then.
	And then we can overthrow capitalism.
	And so that's where that was.
	Anyway, Jimbo says...
	No, I read that one, actually.
	Jan says, if you aren't making your own way in the world, someone else is making it for you.
	Hold on.
	Have you considered the option that young women, and especially young men, are having their potential ways of making their own way of the world taken away by globalists who hoard money and influence, narrowing job and career prospects, taking away positions where a young man can have a voice?
	Just look at censorship on the internet and why it's so prevalent.
	It gave a voice to even young individuals who are sensible and have good ideas.
	Can't have that.
	Only the establishment's young get to voice pre-approved opinions and get the influence on good jobs.
	Globalization's got a lot to answer for.
	I mean, Jan is making some fair points there, but I think my counter-argument to that would be that is partially the story, but it's not the whole story, and there's always room for manoeuvring.
	uh initiative so it isn't it isn't that these things aren't happening jan they obviously are but also if you tell people well again you fall into the sort of leftist trap of saying you're being oppressed by the patriarchy and therefore you can't achieve anything on your own and so it's a demotivating force and you know so it's not that it's not true it is true but also there is still room to maneuver
	and i think that we should emphasize that and i think given it's a little bit of thought now because obviously i've never got thought before um i think globalization also helps people in our country to make the wrong choices such as these are poor paid jobs or jobs i don't want to do I don't want to work at all.
	Benefits are going up.
	And the government doesn't really mind paying me benefits because now we'll import someone to do that job.
	So that's the part of globalization that's really affected this country, as in job prices would have been higher.
	If the benefits were lower, people would have been forced to take those jobs.
	But because of our constant stream of foreign labor, it's like, well, that's a headache.
	I don't want to fight today.
	Yeah.
	And unfortunately for young people, I mean, you are right, Jan.
	It's not like these aren't harmful to the prospects of these young people.
	They absolutely are.
	Anyway, Alistair says, I went to a work training course about microaggressions.
	The solution to the course offered was microcompassion.
	Luckily, the idea of these being micro-problems did not get me in trouble.
	As soon as the training was made fun of once, the entire comment part of the training devolved into bored complaining about the course.
	So at least people in general are like, oh, they're forcing us to do this nonsense.
	Dr.
	Anthony Fauci says, I wonder if the bank that deplatformed the Reclaim Party is backing either the Labour or Conservative Party.
	Good question.
	Who knows the reason?
	And hopefully Lawrence can do something about it.
	I mean, I can't...
	If the Conservative Party was any good, they'd say, no, you can't just de-platform someone from your banking service, because banking services are an essential part of living in the 21st century.
	Everyone has to be able to have a bank account, whether you like them or not.
	Anyway, George says, what do you think the possibility of Elon being controlled opposition is?
	With somebody who is seemingly pro-free speech in charge of Twitter, right-wing people being censored is more unbelievable to the average normie.
	I don't see anything about Elon that actually says that he's controlled opposition.
	The problem that Elon has is that he's operating in the mainstream space, and so he's got mainstream pressures put upon him, and he has to in sometimes yield to those things and in sometimes not.
	And I think actually with the buyout of Twitter, he's found a very effective way...
	To act as a strong battering ram to go against the left-wing hegemony of the culture.
	So I actually think that Elon's quite a rebel in many ways.
	But he's still within a particular system with lots of people who have hooks on him.
	So what do you think?
	Yeah, and just because he's doing something with Twitter that we agree with doesn't mean he agrees with anything else we think.
	That's true.
	And that's what's good about the right, where the left, once you know one thing on the left, you know everything because they agree with everything.
	Where he may disagree with many things that I agree with or you agree with, but that then wouldn't mean we wouldn't want him...
	Either on our side or having a say.
	And that's living.
	So he's his own man.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's very clear.
	If nothing else, he's his own man.
	Jimbo says, honestly, watching the new generation of politicians who are Twitter political is pretty terrifying.
	The next generation are being gaslit and propagandized into victimhood.
	Yeah, in 20 years' time, it'll be AOC will be every politician.
	Trust me on this.
	I'm convinced of it.
	Not good, frankly.
	I mean, honestly, I would ban politicians from using social media.
	I swear to God, if I were in charge of this country, you don't need to be on social media if you're a politician.
	Oh, I'm getting Twitter harassment.
	Yeah, because you're a politician.
	definition of your job you know and if you think you're going to get you know backlash then don't use it uh you know and i and i wouldn't i again like it makes them serve a constituency that doesn't even exist you know oh i care about what people on twitter think yeah but that's not a real thing i think all new forms of communication all go through this phase where we're not sure what it's for how to use it it's used as a tool of good a tool of evil and where this goes i don't know
	but they had the same with the Pinting Press.
	We did, and look what happened after that.
	Yeah.
	Massive revolutions, bloody wars racking Europe.
	Because you can share information and you can line people up and you can lie to them a lot more easily and on a mass scale.
	But also you can reveal lies that are told by powerful institutions a lot more easily.
	Yeah.
	And I mean, literally hundreds of years of religious wars, millions dead.
	Makes me a bit worried now.
	I don't like that.
	Not good news.
	Callum says, Elon Musk's attitude to Twitter's takeover is like Garibaldi from Babylon 5 when taking over Edgar's industries.
	I've never watched Babylon 5.
	No, I'm afraid I can't give you any particular agreement on that.
	When he said Garibaldi, I thought you meant the biscuit.
	Yeah, I never heard of any of that, so sorry.
	Omar says, VPNs and bots muddy the water, but it would be interesting to see how many politicians are influenced by interactions from foreign users.
	Definitely a contributing factor to the internet's overinflated power, where disparate groups all over the world give appearance on a much larger consensus.
	If we could break it down further into fringe groups, it would be illuminating to see how much government policy is dictated by furries, pedos, anti-farkommies, And so many other minority opinions that should be readily discarded.
	Yeah, well, I totally agree, actually.
	If we had better data sets on these things, you'd be able to see the proportion of a Labour politician like Stella Creasy's tweets that were liked by, and who they're liked by.
	If you can have clouds of information, see what kind of groups were liking and sharing these things.
	Because that's the feedback she's getting.
	Oh, you know, 20,000 people like that I said this.
	And yeah, okay, but if there are 20,000 people wearing furry suits and going to weird conventions...
	So yeah, what's your demographic here, Stella?
	I mean, at the moment, we can't stop politicians taking Chinese money.
	No, no.
	That's a bigger problem.
	Yeah, that's a huge problem.
	But I do think the sort of silo that the social media, that the politicians use, is a real concern.
	I'm genuinely concerned about this.
	Anyway, Joshua says, I can't imagine this is a new position for Elon's daughter or son, not sure which, It makes you wonder how much seeing his child like this influenced his decision to take on Twitter.
	It makes you hopeful that as this generation degenerates, their parents will start to engage in the culture war.
	I think that's a fantastic point.
	This could be the reason why he's in this fight.
	If you want to know why a father is willing to put everything on the line, it'll be for his family.
	So maybe that is the reason why he's in this fight.
	Very good point.
	I like that.
	I didn't even think about it.
	He'd already lost her.
	And he's thinking, I'm not having this with any more children across the world.
	No, I'm fighting now.
	That could be the answer.
	I wonder if he'll ever say anything about it.
	Edward says, So Carl, a bit of a white pill for us Warhammer first.
	Sorry, you're going to have to listen to people talking about my geeky hobby now.
	I happen to like Warhammer 40,000, so there are a lot of people watching this.
	What's that?
	Yeah, don't worry.
	Okay.
	I'll explain it later.
	But the new rulebook specifically says that Space Marines are male as an essential component.
	Yeah, I'll tell you what, I'll skip this and I'll do a live stream on it later.
	This is good news, though, for anyone who plays.
	Basically, Warhammer 4000 is a tabletop strategy game that you play with plastic models.
	You paint them, you play a game, it's great fun, but it's very male-focused.
	And...
	The woke mob have come for Warhammer saying, well, we want this particular faction, which are the Space Marines, to have female Space Marines.
	And the problem is that the company that make it have essentially found themselves cornered because their entire fan base is young men, or older men, in fact, a lot of the time.
	But just men who just want to play their game of little super soldiers shooting each other in the future.
	And it doesn't make any sense within the confines of the game for the super soldiers to be female.
	It actually is so nonsensical that it destroys the internal logic of the universe.
	And so they're forced to come out and say, no, they have to be men.
	And you can imagine what the screeching of the...
	Can men not have anything to themselves anymore?
	Not even a game.
	Not even a game they can have.
	Nope.
	Nothing.
	Well, that's what these activists are arguing.
	And unfortunately for them, Games Workshop have had to say, well, everyone who plays the game, who spends money on the game, actually doesn't want female space marines.
	And so we're going to say, no, it has to be men.
	And so there's a huge amount of screeching from the Twitter mob, which we're going to go through in a live stream at some point, because it was funny.
	But they have had to say no.
	And you can tell they don't want to say no.
	They don't care.
	They really just want the Twitter mob off their back.
	But unfortunately, they've painted themselves into a corner where they have no other choice.
	It's either destroy their entire business or say no to the Twitter mob.
	And it's quite amusing.
	But you are right.
	Can't men have anything?
	That's what this is.
	Absolutely.
	And many of the people on Twitter will turn around and say, no, it's because these things are cool that we want the female space marines.
	It's like, yeah, that's it.
	That's it.
	It's envy.
	You just want to take that away from someone else.
	I've read a book at the moment on feminism and it's all down to on gratitude.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It really does.
	And like just the green eyes, you know, the, the, Very callous and sinister sort of emotions that underpin it.
	Awful.
	But I hate to say it, folks, but we're out of time there.
	So thank you very much, Nick, for joining us.
	No, thank you.
	Where can they find you again?
	Find me on most social media, NickBookleyMBE.
	Right.
	And if you'd like to support us, obviously go sign up on the website, and we will be back tomorrow.

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