Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 3, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:29:34

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #777

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 3rd of November, 2023.
	I'm very pleased to be joined by Stelios, Carl, and very pleased indeed to have back Godfrey Bloom, who of course is a political commentator, author and military historian.
	I very much enjoyed our chat last time.
	I'm very pleased to have you back.
	Former MEP as well.
	Oh no, don't mention that, it's too ghastly.
	My apologies.
	So, we're going to be talking about Muslims understanding our weaknesses.
	I believe Stelios is going to be talking about the importance of remembrance and Carl's going to be talking about the new Marks and Spencers advert.
	Yeah, the most important bit.
	If you say so.
	No, I'm just joking.
	So, at the minute, it is Islamophobia Awareness Month.
	I'm not sure if you're all aware of this.
	I mean, I'm doing my best, but I'm just one man.
	I know, I'm helping you out.
	It's a whole month, it's not just a day.
	It's a whole year.
	So in the spirit of Islamophobia Awareness Month, I thought it'd be good to look at Islam because, of course, it's definitely not a topical topic at the minute.
	There's certainly no conflict that's going on that everyone's talking about.
	That's not happening.
	To be fair, though, Josh, I mean, you could pick any day.
	That is true.
	And that would have been true.
	That's the tragedy of the situation, isn't it?
	So if we move on to this BBC article here.
	This is for Scotland, by the way.
	Islamophobia awareness should be taught in every school.
	See, I just read this as a form of promotion.
	You know, go around the schools.
	Are you Islamophobic enough?
	Are you sure you haven't really worked on this?
	Sorry.
	I remember actually when I was at school, they played us a video to do with domestic violence, trying to discourage people.
	And don't worry, this isn't going where you think it's going.
	And the gentleman was using lots of creative language to insult his wife, which just gave all of the kids in the class lots of new insults.
	I think that this sort of thing is what's going to happen, because if children are anything like what I was like at school, then whatever you're told to do, you will do the opposite as a matter of course.
	And that's probably what's going to happen here.
	And it's also worth pointing out as well that Hamza Yusuf is of course the First Minister of Scotland, who is a Pakistani Muslim.
	It's a strange thing for them to be so concerned about when the highest position in Scotland is occupied by a Muslim.
	One would presume that they're fine.
	The Muslim population of Scotland is also very low.
	It is indeed.
	Most of them in Britain live in England.
	And it's also very strange as well, because quite often things are framed in a minority sense and actually, you know, Europe somewhat shares a border with the Middle East.
	And I believe the population of Europe is, what, 742 million versus 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, or a quarter of the world's population.
	Yeah, and Stelios, in Greece, do they have Islamophobia Awareness Month?
	They have all sorts of craziness.
	Yes, they have all sorts of cranes in us.
	I haven't heard the month, but yeah, we do have people saying, like Varoufakis for instance, that we should decolonize Greece and stuff like that.
	Would it not be interesting if Islamophobia is there, if it's a true phenomenon, which I suspect it probably is.
	Actually, what does it mean?
	It means a fear of Islam, does it not?
	A fear of Islam.
	So it might be interesting to open up the debate somewhere in the country about why people would have a fear of Islam.
	Why would they have this fear?
	It's not as if there's a track record at all, is there?
	No, exactly.
	It depends.
	Islamophobia links with homophobia, does it not?
	How deep do you dig without turning up your proverbial can of worms?
	Yeah, perhaps people are phobic about Islam for a reason.
	It feels a little bit like the Emperor's Clothes, right?
	The Emperor's New Clothes.
	Everyone can see it.
	Already.
	It seems to be kind of out in the open already, but nobody is brave enough to just go... So.
	There's also some very clever linguistic subversion in the term itself, because of course a phobia is a psychological condition and it's implying that... It's an irrational fear, right?
	Yeah, it's implying irrationality.
	Yeah, it's implying that there's no good reason to be... Oh, exactly.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, people would probably describe me as Islamophobic.
	Even though it's more of a rational objection to the tenets of Islam, it's not necessarily fear.
	I mean, I wouldn't be saying what I say on this podcast if I was afraid.
	So it's kind of a silly term in the first place.
	But I wanted to draw attention to this next article because this is particularly egregious.
	So this is all about Charlie Peters of GB News.
	He called up a mosque I believe it's Lewisham Islamic Center in London.
	Beau was telling me actually as someone from Essex, you know, relatively close to it, that it's got a bit of a dodgy reputation around there.
	I don't know London, it's like a foreign country to me.
	I'm, you know, from the West Country.
	I'm from England, London's a foreign country to me.
	Yes, it's like Mordor to me, to the Shires.
	So he called up because there was a video of one of the Imams accusing the Israeli Defense Force of committing terror and calling for Muslim countries to intervene in the Israel-Hamas conflict and he also for some reason denounced the singer Justin Bieber and Kylie Jenner as sick because of course these are the sacred cows apparently of British culture for some reason.
	I don't really understand the focus on them.
	I mean, I'm more than happy for people to call them out.
	I can explain that.
	I really think this ties into T.S.
	Eliot's view on revealed religion.
	It's very clear that Islam is the revealed religion of Muslims because it's what they do.
	Organize, go to mosque every day, pray five times a day.
	You can see Islam in their lives.
	And so they're looking and going, right, well, we do all of these things.
	What do the Westerners do?
	And our revealed religion appears to be pop stars and indulgence and laziness.
	And so they're like, okay, yeah, well, we denounce your pop stars and say, so do I. Yeah.
	We're going to blow up your shopping malls.
	Okay.
	Well, that's a bit worse than denouncing pop stars.
	Sure, but like, you know, we're going to attack the things we think you hold as sacred cows without realizing we don't actually hold them as sacred cows.
	We kind of, we lack anything sacred.
	Yeah.
	There's a certain amount of apathy towards these sorts of things that they don't necessarily understand because of course, in their own cultures, if they're apathetic towards something, it tends not to be a cultural institution in the same way.
	They come from a culture that prioritizes honor, right?
	So to insult something is to degrade the honor of that thing.
	But I don't care if you degrade Kylie Jenner or whatever it was.
	I encourage it.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I do the same thing on myself.
	I wish I knew who she was.
	Well, I wish I was in your position to be honest.
	But that's the point.
	They're looking at this from a very old world perspective and being like, right, you know, pop stars, we're insulting them.
	What will you do?
	Nothing.
	And so we must seem alien and incomprehensible to them since we don't care about these things, but sorry.
	No, you're very, very right.
	So, it's also worth mentioning as well that this mosque, which has been described as extreme by the government, which doesn't count for much.
	Is that why they gave it so much money?
	Yes, they gave it over half a million pounds of taxpayers' money between 2015 and 2020, because that's what we should be doing with taxpayers' money, is giving half a million to mosques.
	I'm very pleased that all of my taxes are going towards that sort of thing.
	Sorry, just a quick side.
	Just imagine how schizophrenic they must think we are.
	You know, we're like, oh, we don't like Islam, but we are going to give you loads of money.
	And we're not going to take offense when you insult our culture and the things you perceive to be the sacred cows of our culture.
	We're not going to take offense.
	We're just going to give you money.
	And then we're going to be angry at the people for not treating you with due respect.
	It's like, what must they think of us?
	I think it's part of the reason why they talk about Britain and the West more generally speaking as being ripe for Islamic conquest culturally, not an actual military conflict per se, although some I don't doubt would like that, but more so that they're going to try and convert as many people because they see us as misguided, which, you know, the latter part isn't necessarily untrue.
	Have they converted anyone though?
	Andrew Tate, I suppose.
	Not that that counts for much.
	I have suspicions about the Archbishop of Canterbury.
	I think you might be on to something.
	I've never heard him really stand up for Christianity, so he must be going for something, somewhere, somehow.
	I think it has to do with lobbying to a significant extent, because I think that the demographics of Muslim populations in Europe are overwhelmingly voting for left-wing parties, whereas in their countries of origin they may support more conservative policies.
	This is kind of epitomized in Turkey, I mean Turkey, in Germany, easy mistake to make, They'll vote Erdogan in Turkey and then a left-wing party.
	But Greens in Germany.
	Yeah, so it's more of a divide-and-conquer issue that leftist parties are playing and they are exchanging money for political support.
	They're buying political support and they're saying, I'm gonna fund whatever you want me to fund.
	So, coming back to the story itself, Charlie Peters contacted this mosque to ask them about these sorts of questions that are raised from their rhetoric about basically calling for a jihad against Israel and getting taxpayers' money.
	I dare you to denounce Justin Bieber, sir.
	But these seem like legitimate journalistic questions, right?
	You're getting taxpayers money to go against the official government line on the conflict, right?
	And so it makes sense that you reach out to them for questions.
	But if we move on to this tweet here from Charlie himself, the Lewisham Mosque uploaded to their own Twitter account, which I'm quite surprised exists, because...
	I would have thought that a mosque wouldn't have a Twitter account.
	I mean, maybe I'm a bit backwards.
	I wouldn't expect a church either, but here we are.
	And they pretty much screenshotted their reply to him, and they went through his GB News articles and tallied up how many of his articles.
	Down here it says, the articles you've You have churned out the GB News website, which we number at 40.
	It appears 17 of these related primarily to Muslims, i.e.
	42.5%.
	You have a further five articles relating to issues of race and refugees, and they go on to say that, well, considering you are not an ethnic minority, well, you must be racist!
	You're not allowed to talk about this subject.
	And I don't think Lewisham Mosque is actually concerned about racial equality.
	I think they're Really?
	I know that's a rather radical opinion.
	Came as a shock.
	I think they're using our controversial politics against us for their own ends.
	And in this case, it's not to be scrutinized.
	Which, you know, you can understand, but they're using tactics that aren't necessarily communicating on good faith, are they?
	They're trying to deflect and it goes on and on.
	And it also mentions that GB News has had clashes with Ofcom.
	Were you involved in this?
	Do you denounce GB News for their misinformation?
	Things like that.
	So they're pulling out every trick in the book to try and get out of answering the questions he sent them.
	It's worth mentioning here, he says, I'm not intimidated by this slot.
	Tick tock.
	And of course he's saying, I'm waiting for you to answer the questions, the time's running out.
	But that's not how they chose to interpret it.
	Disingenuous or not.
	Let me guess, they're going to accuse him of calling them terrorists and that's a reference to a bomb?
	No, they're saying that he's making a potential bomb threat to the mosque.
	Which is a little bit on the nose from radical Islam, isn't it?
	Hello pot, this is kettle.
	I'm a bit confused.
	You would think that they would have a bit more foresight than this to...
	I just don't understand why they would draw attention to that.
	It's also the first thing that comes to mind kind of reveals what's on your mind as well.
	There's no reason we should think that the Lewisham Mosque is going to be involved in any bombings or anything, I'm sure, but the idea that that can be tantamount to a bomb threat I mean, come on.
	So they reported him to the police for a hate crime.
	And I did contact him.
	Isn't that worse than a hate crime?
	It's a threat of violence.
	It is.
	Yeah.
	So they kind of understood that it wasn't an actual bomb threat.
	What policemen did you talk to in Lewisham, one wonders?
	Well, on account of most of them are so stupid, it's almost unbelievable.
	Did you find an intelligent policeman in Lewisham?
	I don't know.
	I can't say I've ever been for very good reason.
	Things like this.
	I was going to put my money on it though.
	I was going to play some bet.
	But as I understand it, I've not seen any news to say that the police actually turned up and followed this up.
	Okay.
	Perhaps they were too busy tearing down, you know, these Israel posters like some of them were doing.
	I don't think that was necessarily Lewisham, but nevertheless, it was the Met Police, right?
	So yes, I did contact Charlie Peters for, you know, some sort of comment that he hasn't unfortunately got back to me yet.
	I wanted to find out whether the police did actually come round.
	Maybe he is arrested right now, who knows?
	But I haven't seen any news about it, so I think it's fair to say he probably hasn't.
	But the point being here, they understand our political weaknesses in this country, what they can exploit to get away with doing what they want.
	There are lots of instances of this, and this is particularly egregious because of a new report that was out recently, as GB News have reported on, In an article titled, Police ignoring hate speech against white people, shocking new findings.
	So this is a report from the Institute of Economic Affairs.
	They, in GB News' words, found free speech was being stifled by a surge in numbers of hate crime investigations, which I wholeheartedly agree with that presentation.
	It says, people who speak out on controversial topics including transgender rights and Islam were facing police probes after their opinions were flagged for being potentially harmful.
	The IEA's head of cultural affairs, Mark Glending, who penned the report, claimed laws were only partially being applied.
	He also suggested police were refusing to seek prosecutions for similar cases directed at white victims.
	So these sorts of laws are also being selectively applied by the police, not only that they're being exploited and people know that you can exploit them, we are having our own institutions turned against us in our own country by people who I think have no place here.
	I don't think that's particularly controversial when it comes to that particular mosque.
	So what do you all think of this?
	Well I think basically The problem we have, it all comes down to the walking away basically from our principles of English law, which have been developed over, one might argue, a thousand years.
	You have hate speech is a thought speech, isn't it?
	And in a free society, that doesn't stand up in law because somebody says, I've been shocked and insulted because somebody said they hate me.
	That is not a matter for law.
	It's only a matter for law if you are inciting violence.
	Say, I hate Welshman, so everybody needs to go out and find the nearest Welshman and duff him up.
	That's illegal.
	But there's nothing illegal about saying, I hate Welshman.
	Incidentally, I don't.
	But I mean, you should be able to say that in a free society.
	I hate Welshman, or Scotsman, or Lancastrians in particular.
	Yorkshireman.
	You can't really run a society with this kind of law.
	And, of course, the first people who pick up on it are people who can abuse this ridiculous law.
	And then, of course, you have a politicized police force, certainly at the top, and police, the junior policemen in the main who haven't had the benefit of traditional education and aren't frightfully bright, who are very easily manipulated by their assistant commission or their operational who are very easily manipulated by their assistant commission or their operational officers, so on and so forth, who are probably being fast-tracked from university and
	So you shoot into being chief inspector, and then you've not even started shaving yet, but that's the kind of police force that we have, and I've watched it happen over the last 10 years, 15 years.
	The politicization of the police force, which is all quite deliberate.
	This is no accident.
	This is quite deliberate.
	So they can enforce, and when I say they, if you don't know who they are, they're not.
	You're very naive and stupid because they are now running the country.
	So it means that the World Economic Forum and their minions can now enforce lockdowns, jabs, or hate speech, or all this kind of thing that they do.
	And it's very interesting, if I may digress for just a moment, to see police behavior with Just Stop Oil blocking the roads, and how they're treated, and how people were treated when they were Demonstrating against lockdown.
	You see no real desire to do anything about just stop oil.
	And that comes from the top.
	That doesn't come from the bottom.
	That comes from the top.
	And this is what we're seeing almost now on a daily basis.
	And I think that's, of course, people have completely and totally lost faith in the police.
	And once you lose faith, a country like ours, lose faith in the police, that's really a very serious matter indeed because that means we're just now like any other nation.
	We don't see the policemen as our protectors.
	We see them as an intimidatory force.
	May I add something here because I think that it is relevant.
	I think that to a degree this is understood and the category of hate crime is largely invented precisely to give a facade of the police doing something.
	Whereas in fact they are putting a lot of resources to things that are in crime.
	Not in the conventional sense anyway.
	Yes.
	I've actually spoke to quite a few police officers both retired and current and they say much the same thing as you do that there's a lot of political pressure in the institutions to make them behave in certain ways and anyone who resists will either be held down at a lower level and not rise up the ranks and of course there's also the The compounding effect of insisting on having a degree to be a police officer, which, of course, is a form of selection bias for a certain type of person.
	Of course.
	I mean, they are woke when they join the police.
	They come out and it's sad to say the army is the same.
	They generally recruit junior officers from universities now, almost, you know, right off the Richter scale.
	And you do not need a university degree to be a policeman or an army officer.
	In fact, I think it's a problem.
	It actually holds you back, because by the time you finish your university degree, you think woke.
	You've lost any concept of risk analysis or objectivity when you leave university.
	But I can't see the point of university education at all, least of all for a policeman or an army officer.
	A complete waste of time.
	And the idea of the purpose of the police is to guard public safety, not just to say that we are representing Group X in the force.
	Exactly, and the whole concept under Robert Peel was the prevention of crime.
	The whole concept was there should be bobbies on the beat to prevent crime.
	That was the whole concept, and it was a concept up to relatively recently, maybe 30, 40 years ago.
	You are a citizen with powers of arrest, and you are there to prevent crime.
	You're not there to be four of you in a car racing around the crimes already being committed.
	That's not the point of a police force.
	But as I say, we have politicians, policemen, soldiers, so on and so forth, who have not had the benefit of a traditional education, who couldn't give you the principles of English law, who couldn't have a really meaningful conversation about law.
	Lawyers!
	I know lawyers who don't understand law.
	They earn big fees for conveyancing and doing all sorts of failing to abate a smoky chimney, but they don't think about the law.
	I'm just a quick thing I'm I'm more concerned I am obviously deeply concerned about those things but I also think this manifests in a particular way which gives off the aspect of a kind of self-governing Islamic community where it has its own sharia courts and I assume it has some sort of internal mechanism to enforce the decisions some sort of community mechanism to enforce these decisions and then when you've got the police of course being partial in their application of hate crimes and hate speech laws and things like that
	It strikes me that the police don't feel they have a moral authority to govern the Muslim community and to police them in the same way they police the English community.
	Whereas, of course, you know, if if a bunch of football lads turned up protesting that something was going on, they would.
	I mean, you saw the other day was anything that comes close to being hate speech.
	And it's like you would never talk to the Muslim community that way.
	I think it's because the police don't really feel that they are the police of that community.
	I think they view them as sort of a separate thing that they have to And that comes from Police College.
	If you look at Police College, this is what they have been trained.
	When they come out of Police College, this is what they have been told.
	And you can't do this, you can't do that, unless you phone up and get in touch with the local Muslim community representative, who will then tell you what you can and can't do and where you can and can't go.
	No, I'm not blaming the police particularly at junior levels.
	As you quite rightly say, their career is over.
	If they just say, oi, just a minute, what about this or what about that?
	No, they haven't got a prayer.
	Why anybody would join the police, I really don't know.
	I can't imagine why anybody would join the police.
	No, but you're certainly right, Karl, as well, that they are treated with kid gloves.
	And I've heard firsthand that they basically apply a different set of laws to Islamic communities, which ironically, you know, they're one of the few groups of people that are actually allowed communities in Britain anymore.
	We certainly aren't.
	But the thing that kind of wound me up the most about this sort of area of political discourse is this next article from the Telegraph.
	It is worth mentioning as well.
	I have recently, if you go back Jack, It was very complimentary to the Telegraph because I was basically arguing that they were stealing our talking points in the best possible way, of course.
	I don't mean it in a plagiaristic way.
	I was pleased to see it and I was saying, wow, all of these things that we've been talking about, the Telegraph has all of a sudden started talking about.
	And then I saw this article.
	So this is From a fellow called Hussain Hussain, or Hussain Abdul Hussain, good strong English name, Islamism is a... To be fair, he could be called Neville Neville, couldn't he?
	Sorry.
	That's just as amusing to me.
	Or Peter from French, French, French.
	So Islamism is a failed ideology.
	Muslims must embrace the West.
	So from the title, that sounds... I mean, this sounds like something that came out in 2009 or something, right?
	It does, yes.
	Good luck.
	But I believe this is an Iraqi gentleman.
	I think he's big in the foreign policy world, particularly in the Middle East, one would assume.
	And I'm just going to read a little bit from this article because I think that he's added some sugar to the pill.
	And the pill, of course, contains progressivism.
	And he's used language of the right and is appealing to the Telegraph sort of audience who might be Conservative voters, maybe even Reform, those sorts of people, to insert these notions in quite cleverly, I think, that I think it's actually wrong.
	And, of course, I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
	So, it reads as follows.
	Growing up in Iraq and Lebanon, we looked at the West with awe.
	The West was ahead of the Arabs on many levels, including government, urban planning, social welfare, science, literature, technology, and military strength.
	Which, of course, is true.
	In Lebanon, almost every child at school was taught three languages, English and French, in addition to our native Arabic.
	Parents talked to their children in these languages.
	We generally associate it to success and wealth with speaking Western languages.
	It carries on to say some other things about how the better you spoke these languages, the higher your status in these societies and He says, during my years in the old homeland, the Arabs were in consensus over the need to emulate the West, but there was an obstacle.
	The West was Christian and we were Muslim.
	The Arabs therefore reasoned that they would copy everything from the West except social norms.
	We Muslims did not eat pork or drink alcohol.
	Intergender relations were strictly limited and monitored, and the collective tribal opinion Um, always trumped the independent personal thinking.
	I think I misread that, but you get the gist.
	Um, so it says our Westernized life copied consumerism, but left out values such as liberty, freedom, and equality.
	The result was a society that was Western on the outside, but backwards and tribal on the inside.
	Our societies produced states that were in our image, sovereign on the outside, but failing on the inside.
	So what's implicit here is that you can emulate these economic things, because of course what he listed off there are largely products of the Industrial Revolution and advanced economies relative to the Islamic world.
	Global capitalism.
	Exactly, yes.
	But I think what is missed here is that the reason that it happened in the West and not elsewhere, that was because of our social norms.
	It didn't just come out of a vacuum.
	It wasn't like 2001, a space odyssey where a monolith came down and we just, um, you know, had these things divinely.
	There was no profit in our head.
	Yes.
	Although one can somewhat understand why a Muslim might interpret it in that way.
	But you can't divorce these two things.
	You can't divorce our society from our economy because the two are so intermeshed with one another that they are inseparable.
	And so he's trying to argue that you can have an advanced economy without the society that we have now implicitly.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's a very subversive thing to say, because of course, then it demeans the value of our culture, of our society, because of course, your metrics for greatness, of course, you know, our culture can be viewed on its own terms, but also what it has led to.
	I mean, it's no mistake that the European powers were the colonial powers that we were able... I mean, in his defense, there is a lot about our society that should change.
	Of course, yes.
	But the thing that I'm going to sort of skip forward to now is this.
	He goes on to say, this is towards the end, this is why Arab and Muslim immigrants in the West now endorse the most radical and conservative of Islamist ideologies.
	The same Arab and Muslim immigrants who left their homeland to flee tyranny and failing governments are now cheering for the same tyrants that they left behind seeking better lives.
	That latter part is true, I mean we touched on that before.
	Are they fleeing tyranny and collapsing governments, or are they coming to this country because we have a strong economy and they can make more money than their home country?
	But also because we're really soft touchers.
	We are, yes.
	We also give people free handouts.
	That's sort of the whole economic package.
	We're going to give your mosques half a million pounds a year at the taxpayer's expense.
	So this is using the language of the British right, broadly speaking.
	to insert notions that are categorically untrue.
	I think that to argue that, you know, they're just fleeing persecution.
	He's using the language of freedom to talk about people that don't conceive of it in that way, do they?
	They don't look at the world as totalitarian or not.
	You give Muslims a choice and they'll probably advocate for dictatorship.
	They'll vote for the Muslim Brotherhood.
	Yeah.
	They'll vote for Hamas.
	But there's a flip side, is there not, to the coin?
	I mean, that might have been true 50 years ago.
	I don't know that's true now.
	The West now is a secular society based on what my institute, the Mises Institute, would call welfare warfare.
	And credit.
	So consequently, I would argue now that our culture and our society is at an all-time nadir.
	We are not better than anybody else.
	I would have argued maybe years and years ago, that it was.
	I believe there was a lot of good in the British Empire.
	It was broadly speaking, as empires go, fairly pragmatic and fairly good and balanced, as empires go.
	But based on non-interference.
	I mean, it was a Christian empire.
	British Empire was the biggest empire the world's ever seen.
	It was Christian.
	But we didn't interfere with other people's religion and the Indian subcontinent.
	We kept our nose out.
	We were quite happy.
	We were quite happy for Hindus and Muslims to do their own thing.
	So it was fairly liberal.
	in the English sense of the word.
	But I now think we are now so indebted, so addicted to warfare and welfare that I think we are ripe now for people bringing in another culture, however degraded that may be.
	But I mean, the Muslims actually believe that they have a system.
	I mean, our churches are empty.
	We have no moral compass.
	Even our democracy is a sham now.
	Houses of Parliament don't actually, our elected representatives in representative democracy don't actually stand up for anything that we want.
	I haven't been into a single pub ever where everybody thought the government was doing a good job for years, decades and decades.
	Everybody thinks it's ghastly and this is a problem that we have.
	So I would argue with this article, which I did read a number of times, It's like the cure-its-egg, good in parts, but I think it's perhaps, if it had been written 30 years ago, it might have been a lot more right than it actually is today.
	I would certainly agree with you on that.
	But the point I'm trying to make here is that both in terms of dealing with law enforcement and our own government, as well as communicating ideas in our political discourse and, you know, purportedly right-wing outlets like the Telegraph, Uh, they are using language, which is appealing to our English sensibilities to more or less subvert our understanding of the way things are going in, in their own favor.
	And I very much don't approve of this.
	And I think that actually more attention should be brought to this sort of thing because.
	I think this is a very egregious article concealed in language that might otherwise be appealing.
	And as you said, it might have been appropriate in the past, but this understanding is very far from the mark.
	Speaking of culture and welfare warfare, as you said, I think that we can start a discussion about whether Western cultures want to survive and whether they want to maintain their identity.
	And I want to say that a lot of people, especially young people, don't know what we celebrate on the 11th of November.
	And I don't know about you, but I think that one of the institutions that celebrates all year Basically, the UN.
	So, let's see what the UN celebrates.
	If we scroll down and we go... World Braille Day, I saw that.
	November.
	Just November.
	They're basically having a... Almost every day of the year, they've got something.
	Yes.
	Say, hopping on one leg and rubbing your head.
	Oh, yeah.
	I can't help but notice that the 11th of November is weirdly absent.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's strange.
	It's absent.
	And you know what is present?
	Fifth of November, World Tsunami Day Awareness.
	Sixth of November, International Day of Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.
	And you know, Men's Day is 19th of November.
	You know what the UN celebrates?
	World Toilet Day.
	Yeah.
	On my birthday, it's the Day of Prevention and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence.
	That's unfortunate.
	So weird sort of collection of patron saints, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	And just to show the difference, the UN does celebrate Women's Day on the 8th of March.
	So I think we should.
	International Mother Language Day.
	World Day of Social Justice.
	Are you sure this hasn't been written by Monty Python?
	It should have been, yeah.
	I think so.
	Anyway.
	Tourism Resilience Day.
	Tourism Resilience?
	What's that?
	You go to Spain, it's 40 degrees.
	Zero Discrimination Day.
	International Day of the Arabian Leopard.
	Well, that is my favorite day.
	I mean, I like the Arabian leopards as much as the next man, but the entire day, every year!
	That's been my favorite so far.
	So, I think we should talk about Armistice Day.
	I've heard of it.
	It wasn't on the UN's list.
	It's important that it is a day, whereas a lot of the things we talked previously about are months.
	Like we had the Islamophobia Awareness Month that we talked in the previous segment.
	Black History Month.
	Exactly.
	It's, you know, it's November's Trans Awareness Month.
	I've been reliably informed by Twitter.
	Oh, great.
	Yeah.
	So basically, it's Armistice Day.
	It was an agreement to end the fighting of World War One, which preluded the peace negotiations.
	And as it says here, from the Royal British Legion, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, we will remember them.
	And let us say something about Remembrance Sunday.
	It says here, Remember Sunday is a national opportunity to remember the service and sacrifice of all those that have defended their freedoms and protected our way of life.
	We remember the armed forces and their families from Britain and the Commonwealth, the vital role played by the emergency services and those who have lost their lives as a result of conflict or terrorism.
	So one thing you can say here is this is important to the British, for the British community.
	This is important.
	My dad was a sergeant in the RAF for 25 years, so every year we would have some of this.
	I'd be growing up in military camps, so every year we'd have, you know, these sorts of things plastered everywhere, which is fine and it's totally normal, you know, it's kind of mundane to me actually.
	I think, yeah.
	It's just become apparent this is just not What the British remember now.
	I think there is also Veterans Day in the US.
	I think there is.
	Yeah.
	I think for people outside of the UK, I think people don't necessarily realize how significant this is culturally for us because I remember growing up and talking to my grandparents about what they did in the war.
	All of them were involved in some way.
	And, you know, it was a point of immense pride that, you know, they actually did their bit for their country.
	And they spoke of Um, you know, our resilience with a certain amount of, um, they would highlight the virtues to me and say, um, listen, you know, this is what we've done.
	Yeah.
	And it's also nice because, you know, you're having a nice time where you're being told a story by your grandparents.
	Um, and it's, it's one of those things that I think is, it's kind of a soft spot.
	And I think that both world war one and world war two are particular.
	Cultural touchstones, even to the modern day, of course.
	People reference figures in World War Two all the time as a reference point for politics, don't they?
	And I think that's because of how much space it takes up in the public consciousness.
	How much the 20th century shaped Britain.
	Yeah, of course, yeah.
	Well, I obviously, as an ex-soldier, and I've never missed a day at the sun enough, you know, once a year.
	The thing that disappoints me, I'll tell you what the thing that disappoints me, it is, you know, the anniversary of the Armistice, which is fine and that's as it should be.
	But it is a memorial service, it isn't a celebration, it's a memorial service, and it's called Remembrance.
	Now the problem is, we seem to have learnt nothing We've learnt nothing.
	You would think with horrific casualties, 3 million of the British Empire alone in the Great War, over 300,000 in 1939-45, and including many from the Indian Army in the subcontinent who fought very bravely in Burma on the side of the British.
	Well, they were British.
	British Empire.
	I'm very proud they are too, I can tell you.
	I know many of them.
	But we've learnt nothing.
	We seem to be rushing to a war every five minutes if we possibly can.
	We are such a war-like people.
	I mean, I know we carry on the tales of Washington, whatever Washington says goes, but we can't keep our neb end out.
	We couldn't keep our neb end out.
	Of a conflict in 1914 which was nothing whatsoever to do with us.
	We didn't get involved in the Franco-Prussian War.
	We didn't need to get involved in 2014.
	But we've already got special forces in the Ukraine.
	We're sending missiles to the Ukraine.
	We're sending observers or whatever they are to the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
	It's got nothing to do with us.
	That, as we're looking at that screen now, is what comes of it.
	Dead soldiers, dead young men, maimed young men, wounded young men, to no purpose.
	And my thesis when I graduated from the Royal College of Defence Studies was the futility of it all, the expense of it all.
	Can anybody tell me of a major war where anybody actually really won?
	Nobody gets anything from warfare.
	It's just a waste of time and money and young men.
	It's terrible and we don't seem to have learnt anything.
	Very well said.
	And one thing that I want to say is that it is a bit tragic that it is just a day, whereas it should be the whole year, in a sense.
	And what do I mean by that?
	I don't mean that the ceremony should take place on a daily basis, but people in their behavior should act as if they have learned the lesson that you say they haven't.
	And anyway, I think that it's important to talk a bit about the history of the poppy.
	I think that you're a military historian, you know much better than I do about it.
	But from a kind of research I did, I think that the poppy is a symbol of remembrance.
	It grew and it was quite resilient in growing in the battle fields of the Western Front of World War I. And there was a Canadian doctor called John McRae.
	Who lost his friend and he wrote a poem called In Flanders Fields.
	And then there is a kind of...
	Disagreement.
	I don't know what version you think is right, but who had the idea and who was influenced by that poem?
	Was it the poppy lady from France, Anna Guerin, or Moina Michael from America who had the idea that poppies should be sold as a symbol of remembrance in order to aid ex-servicemen and the families of those deceased?
	But I think that, in a sense, this is a really interesting and important tradition, that it is a pity if it gets desecrated by people who disrespect it.
	Who might be interested in desecrating one of our few remaining sacred traditions?
	Well, and the question is whether there are also people from within Western cultures who want to be there.
	Sort of like, is it called fifth column?
	Yep.
	Yes.
	Because there are people in Western societies who hate their countries.
	Most of the people in our government hate this country.
	And it goes back to Jim Callaghan.
	Jim Callaghan, when he was Prime Minister, was a neighbour of ours.
	He lived down the road, would you believe?
	And he used to go to Armistice Day, and he didn't wear his medals.
	He was a naval officer in the war, and he didn't wear his medals.
	And somebody actually said to him, when he finished being Prime Minister, somebody said to him, Why didn't you wear... He was wearing his medals, you know, when he finished, and he was wearing his medals.
	And he literally made an interesting comment.
	He said, well, yes, I'm wearing my medals now because I'm only representing myself.
	And my father said, Jim, who were you representing before?
	So this has been going on since the 70s.
	You're all too young to remember, but what's-his-name turned up, Michael Crossman, in a donkey jacket, celebrating his fight against fashion, which he did from a desk at the Evening Standard.
	Yeah, these people just don't like us.
	And they're our government.
	I mean, we know the French don't like us, but our government's full of people who hate us, hate our traditions, and we seem to just roll over, don't we, as a nation?
	We just seem to roll over.
	But there is an extra element into it, I would say, because on the one hand, there is a financial issue that has to do with aiding veterans and their families.
	But on the other, there is also a cultural issue.
	But I think that we should focus a lot on this.
	I think that's important because it shows the least amount of gratitude that people can show to People who lost their lives and fought for a lot of the institutions that we take for granted, and certainly the people you say hate their countries, take for granted.
	Because I'm sure that they wouldn't like living in different kind of societies.
	Especially maybe if they thought that they could get away with it and strike a particular kind of deal, maybe yes.
	They've been too comfortable for too long and they don't know what it's like to be afraid.
	So, 105 years afterwards.
	Let's see this.
	Council cancels Remembrance Day parade over health and safety concerns.
	Barrowtown Council said it was saddened to have to cancel the parade.
	Now, what sort of reasons do you think they cited?
	Well, apparently health and safety.
	Yeah, that's very Python-esque, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	You know, remembering people losing their lives.
	Oh, we're a bit afraid that, you know, the health and safety at a parade.
	Okay.
	And parades known for their high body counts.
	What?
	And they say an incident occurred at the Remembrance Sunday parade in Stadley in 2018, where an army veteran suffered serious head injuries when he was hit by a car while marshalling the parade.
	So there was an accident five years ago.
	So the parade this year has to be cancelled.
	That seems like an excuse to my mind, doesn't it?
	And no one can just say that let's close the road just for the parade.
	It gets done all the time, doesn't it, in lots of different places.
	They're more than happy to close off roads for a parade and I think, you know, for Remembrance Sunday, or Armistice Day, sorry, then that would be a very, very good reason for it, isn't it?
	It's something that everyone recognises, well, most people recognise as being a good thing if they're British.
	I think if you found, if you dug down a little bit, If there were any such thing these days as investigative journalists, which of course there aren't, you would find at Barrie Town Council the normal lineup of very suspicious British hating people that have used health and safety to get rid of this.
	I bet if I phoned up and I knew anybody in Barrytown Town Council, or somebody who lived in and around there, they'd be able to tell us straight away, oh yeah, that's Red Ken.
	He doesn't want the thing to go ahead and he's calling the shots.
	It will also, I would imagine, be almost 100% Labour.
	I'm just looking that up now actually.
	Yeah, I'd be very surprised if it isn't 100% Labour, and with all the baggage that that goes, and I wouldn't mind betting also in Barrie Town Council, the turnout to vote is probably only about 25%, so they don't even represent anybody.
	I'm looking at all the councillors now.
	I'm curious now.
	I really hope this pans out.
	It's all Plaid Cymru and Labour.
	That's even worse.
	Christ, Labour are bad enough.
	I saw one Conservative councillor just from my cursory look.
	Oh no, there's two out of about 30.
	Literally the most anti-British parties you could have in the Welsh Government.
	Have you got the turnout there?
	Because I bet it's right.
	I'll have a quick look.
	I bet it's atrocious.
	I'm quite surprised because it's not like the Welsh weren't involved.
	Well, the wonderful memorial at Mamet's Wood, of course, on the Somme.
	Very brave regiments, the Welsh fought bravely.
	And I know Wales, I know Welshmen.
	Go to, I have actually, I was at St Asaph about five years ago because I had to be in Wales and I went to the memorial service at the cathedral.
	You want to hear the voices raised, you know, at the end of it, at the end of the thing.
	Absolutely moving, moving, so moving.
	Yeah.
	There's no shortage of patriotism in Wales.
	They just, they just vote in these appalling people.
	Drakeford, where did they come up from?
	It's because they call themselves Welsh nationalists.
	It's like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
	So, let us go to London.
	It says here, pro-Palestine activists planning million-strong march to disrupt Remembrance Day.
	Just show you these.
	Is that their explicit intention to disrupt it, or is it just... Well, why would you otherwise?
	I'm just curious as to their, you know, what they've explicitly... I'm beyond giving these people the benefit of the doubt.
	I'm not doing that.
	Every year, this is the national holiday on the 11th of November, you're like, yeah, we're going to have a march.
	No, no, you did that deliberately and you knew what you did.
	And it says the Palestine Solidarity Campaign with another organization, they are calling for a million march for Palestine.
	And it says that the group plans to hold one of its dozens of protests this weekend, just a few hundred meters from the cenotaph commemorating the UK's war dead.
	Mind you, there's always an upside.
	The upside is that, is this going to just slowly wake up the people of what has happened in the last 10 years?
	Will people start looking at this and go, crikey, you know, how many of these people are here?
	And there's an irony also that the streets Seemed can be commanded by these people who have who are there in the millions or could be there in the millions, because there are millions of them.
	But of course, then you ask yourself again where the real power is.
	Is it on the street or in the banking system or people that we don't know, people, oligarchs that we can't see?
	And I don't know whether you saw the clip the other day of the Pope kissing Nat Rothschild's hand.
	I heard about it, yeah.
	I saw it and I thought, now, you know, it's interesting who runs this country.
	One thing is sure, it's not us.
	You've seen the image, I think it's one of the Rothschilds, poking his finger into Prince Charles' chest.
	I have seen that, yeah.
	Yep.
	It tells you all you need to know.
	So, the Metropolitan Police had an announcement.
	It says, we're aware of media reporting and social media commentary suggesting next weekend's remembrance events could be disrupted by protest.
	As we set out in the update below, we will do everything in our power to ensure this does not happen.
	What's the advice from Barrytown Council?
	I mean, the Mayor of London could just say, you're not allowed to find out the turnout.
	Cancel it!
	Yeah, the thing is, to protest in London, you've got to get permits, right?
	As in, if you want to go and protest outside of Parliament, you've got to get a permit.
	So if someone has stamped off that permit, the Mayor of London could just say, no, you're not having that permit on that day.
	Now, there might be a reason why Mr. Khan would not be interested in preventing that protest or respecting British traditions, but, you know.
	I think without a sufficient police presence there, it's going to be a bloodbath, isn't it?
	I don't know, and I don't want to... I hope it isn't.
	I've got a feeling this could be egg on face here, but I've got a feeling this could be a non-event, a damp squib, because I think this, if that goes ahead, They're not stupid.
	These people are stupid.
	They know if they really want to turn people away, ordinary people, who might be feeling very sympathetic at the moment to the Palestinian cause, if they want to turn that off, that will go ahead.
	Which again begs the question then, Who's really behind it?
	Who's the power behind the throne letting this happen?
	One wonders.
	Because that will certainly turn people off the Palestinian cause, which at the moment is getting a lot of sympathy.
	Here we see the call to march.
	The Million March for Palestine, London.
	Let's make this the biggest march in history.
	They're saying Saturday 11th of November.
	You see?
	And we have here the socialist Shelley Asquith saying, dozens of British Palestinian children led the half million strong march in London yesterday.
	Those who seek to paint them as anything other than a symbol of hope for freedom and justice are cruel beyond belief.
	It's not like the Palestinians to use children as human shields.
	Yeah.
	And let's just, uh, I'll just let this play here.
	We have to look at the, the treatment, let's say of, Yeah, I mean they've done this multiple times.
	Someone from Black Lives Matter tried to burn one of the British flags on there.
	I'm just tolerating these people.
	There's a question when they were talking about freedom and justice and whatever, what do they have in mind?
	No, I don't believe them.
	Yeah, well, they're not worthy of being believed.
	Yeah, their justice is their power.
	That's it.
	I'm not sure if you're going to touch on this, but what this calls to mind is our discussion about Popper's paradox of tolerance, which is basically a brief addendum in his Open Society and Its Enemies, talking about, well, if you tolerate people who are going to use your tolerance against you, Then it's going to destroy your society more or less, which, I mean, this is what's going on, right?
	Exactly.
	And there's a question to be had as to why is this being allowed?
	It's basically the question you asked before.
	Anti-British forces are abroad in this country and they're in control of the government and the police and the media.
	And there's just no getting around that at this point.
	And I think the same is for other Western societies as well, because the left is operating in an internationalist way, let's say.
	They don't have national consciousness.
	They think national consciousness is basically the worst atavism possible.
	And I'll just tell my Greek compatriots, think of what would happen if something like that happened on the 25th of March.
	I'm just asking.
	Anyway, so we have this tweet from Douglas Murray.
	It says, UK Hamas supporters are now planning a million march on Remembrance Day.
	They plan to defame our war dead and desecrate the cenotaph itself.
	This is the tipping point.
	If such a march goes ahead, then the people of Britain must come out and stop these barbarians.
	I don't encourage anyone to go to anything, nor do I discourage.
	We are neutral on this subject.
	Anyway, so I think that to a very large extent, a lot of people are forgetting the basic values of Western societies, and they sort of feel a kind of shame.
	And I think that it is a really important thing if we start feeling less shame about our societies.
	Across the West and start thinking that we should, we have something good going on and something worth preserving.
	So I've arrived at the position of just pig-headed national chauvinism at this point.
	Exactly.
	I think not even listening to their arguments anymore.
	I think calls like Douglas Murray's here.
	I mean, I do appreciate his work, but he's basically luring people into a bit of a trap there because, you know, if If there is something going on in London, then the law is going to be selectively applied to people there for Armistice Day rather than the Palestinians, and so it's just going to be a good way of getting in trouble.
	You need to be a little bit suspicious of Douglas Murray, if you don't mind.
	I'll say no more about it.
	Okay.
	Not always quite what he seems.
	I'm pointing both sides.
	Anyway, so just one thing to end.
	If you want to support us, you can subscribe to our website for £5 a month.
	And watch all our premium content such as the latest symposium I did on the semantics, politics and value of freedom.
	Speaking of values that we need to reaffirm.
	So I thought we would talk about the new Marks and Spencer's Christmas advert.
	Now, it's not quite as important as what we've already covered, but I actually think there is something to be learned from this about the current state of the country at large, because these sort of Christmas adverts They, they, the supermarkets produce their own sort of very well crafted, high quality Christmas advent.
	It becomes a bit of a thing where normal society sees these normal people see these on television or whatever they're watching.
	And so it is.
	Something that matters weirdly enough to anyone who's outside of the country.
	It's like, why would this matter?
	It kind of is an event.
	I find it quite frustrating really, because I can never get over the fact that it's an advert trying to sell you a product.
	And then I hear people saying, Oh, have you seen such and such as new advert?
	And it's like, well, why would I willingly watch an advert?
	Yeah.
	Well, the thing is again, we'll watch this.
	So this is Marks and Spencer's first one they put out and it's quite
	traditional and you know everything looks very normal and christmasy and you know it's little anime glove puppets and whatnot you know and so it's very inoffensive right this is a totally normal sort of you know tv christmas advert that represents the right things about christmas it's homely it's warm it's you know it's cold outside but it's warm inside and everyone's jolly and happy to be in the christmas spirit i think in in a word that you would describe them as wholesome Sure.
	Yeah.
	It's yeah.
	Much, much more wholesome sort of kid friendly advert.
	Right.
	And this came out a day ago and no one noticed.
	Right.
	But then the next day, Marks and Spencer's released this advert, which is a different advert, a different kind of advert.
	I figured we'd watch this.
	It's only a minute, 20 long.
	It was a lot longer than the average advert, obviously, because these aren't just adverts.
	They're kind of a kind of statement of intent.
	We'll watch it.
	Unintentionally said their slogan there.
	This isn't just any advert.
	Well, I don't know.
	I don't watch TV.
	Oh, I would do anything for love.
	Thank you.
	You know, it's true and that's a fact.
	I would do anything for love.
	Oh, I would do anything for love.
	But I won't do that.
	No, I won't do that.
	I would do anything for love.
	Anything you've been dreaming of.
	but i just won't do that this christmas do only what you love right
	so can i get your first impressions of that uh Well, it's appalling on almost every level, isn't it?
	Why did they go to the advertising agency who ran this M&S advert, which is a big contract, let's be honest, it's a very big contract for an advertising agency, and they say, We want to make an advert for people who hate Christmas.
	Is there anybody in your organisation who can do an advert that shows how much we all hate Christmas?
	And we're going to kick Santa Claus off, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, and we're going to completely get everybody hating it, because, and then, I don't know, where's the product?
	Where's the product?
	What were we supposed to buy at the end of this advert?
	You know, Marks and Spencer's Christmas pudding?
	Mince pies?
	No!
	It was just a whole whatever it was, 28 seconds, of people who hate Christmas, some of whom apparently are celebrities, don't recognize any of them personally.
	What is the point of the advert other than to annoy us?
	That's the point, isn't it?
	Like there's exactly right.
	That's why this is more.
	This is not just an advert.
	This is an attack.
	This is a message.
	This is a representation of how they think reality should be.
	And I just thought we'd go through it very briefly.
	So we've got here the sort of divorced single mother.
	It is because in the end you see her daughter.
	You never see her husband.
	So I'm going to take that.
	She's divorced.
	Um, then you've got the gay Indian guy.
	Um, just very strange choice of character, but notice how well to do they all seem to be.
	We're desperately middle class.
	This could be a Waitrose advert, couldn't it?
	Let's be frank.
	It absolutely could, yeah.
	This is kind of the London socialite scene is being represented here.
	Then we've got a single woman who's trying to toast marshmallows.
	I don't know if she made that herself.
	No, I don't believe that either.
	And so these are the things that are being represented.
	A divorced woman, a 40-something-year-old singleton, and a gay Indian guy.
	Am I the only one who thinks all of them are incredibly sad?
	Yeah, they are.
	They look sad to me.
	They are, but like... Well, they would be, wouldn't they?
	It's Christmas and they hate Christmas.
	They've got everything in there except somebody snorting coke.
	Do whatever you want to do!
	A lot of them don't have a family as well, which is interesting.
	And the only family we see represented is um a caribbean one who will probably who probably know much more about the spirit of christmas than anybody else in the advert actually they'll be baptist probably and they shouldn't even be in the movie but the the thing is they actually you see actually have children represented and an old person there on the left right but they also have their christmas trees and they're not burning anything
	Like they're all actually enjoying being in each other's company, like a normal family is at Christmas, right?
	But for all of these weird singletons, we get the evil eyes.
	Oh, let's set cards on fire.
	Are they somebody else's Christmas cards?
	No, no, they're her Christmas cards.
	Well, who sent them to her?
	Because she's ghastly.
	No, no, no.
	She's going to be sending them to other people, right?
	But instead of sending them to other people... I didn't get that one.
	Well, they're all the same card, right?
	So she's obviously got... Clever fella.
	Yeah, you're ahead of me.
	Uh, so she, she's setting them on fire.
	So what, what does that mean though?
	Right?
	Cause you send a Christmas card, someone to reinforce your relationship with them.
	So no, I'm thinking of you at this time.
	And so, okay, what you don't know, I'm not going to think of anyone but myself.
	And it's like, look, you're a 50 year old single woman.
	Have you not thought of yourself enough?
	You know, it's, it's, it's literally no thought for anyone else.
	No, I'm going to burn it.
	Like, and that's dramatic imagery.
	It could be advert for sprinklers perhaps in a minute.
	I don't know if it went on.
	She could just put them in the bin and it could just be dumped in the bin.
	No, no, no.
	We're going to set this on fire, right?
	The tradition of keeping in contact with friends and family that you aren't in the presence of.
	Set that on fire is what we've been told.
	So right.
	So we're going to a time on a tradition.
	We're going to throw that.
	We're going to burn that, right?
	Okay, so what have we got now?
	Oh yeah, we've got the triumphal look of her, by the way.
	Oh, well done.
	Well done.
	It's a very subversive representation of a destruction of sentiment.
	Unbelievably subversive.
	And that's exactly right.
	It's the destruction of sentiment.
	No, make it all about you because, again, as if there's one thing that this kind of person hasn't made enough about, it's about themselves, right?
	And so you've got the divorced mother.
	She's desperately trying to make the snowman.
	Oh, it's just getting in my wine.
	You know, I have to do I have to just I have to give this up.
	And then you've got the the gay chap, obviously, is his party with his socialite friends.
	And they're all having fun and playing games.
	No, actually, I don't want you having fun at the party that I'm clearly hosting at my house.
	I'm going to.
	Why?
	I don't want to play this game.
	Yeah, great.
	No, that means you're not allowed to play the game either.
	I'm going to throw in the fish tank and Somehow I'm happy with this.
	This is good.
	I'm somehow a good and important person now.
	It's disgusting.
	Absolutely disgusting.
	It's so disrespectful as if this is a person to aspire to, but of course that's what they're being portrayed as.
	Um, and yeah, then you've got, uh, this woman who apparently is very tired of the toys and decorations.
	So she runs out, but she's not at least really in front of her family.
	You of course have her throwing, um, well, actually that's it.
	So there's a, there's an interesting bit here, but she was originally throwing the party hats into the fire.
	Again, tradition, you pull a cracker, you get a party hat out.
	My wife makes me wear the party hat.
	I don't like them, but okay.
	I do it anyway.
	But instead she's like, no, I'm going to throw it into the fire for all of the decorations into the woodchip, because doing things for other people like her children in the house, that's just too much goddamn work.
	You know what, no.
	I mean, this was called love this-mas, not that-mas.
	As in, do it for yourself, because if there's one thing we don't have in this society at the moment, it's people being so self-absorbed.
	I think this could, unintentionally, be a very clever advert for Marks and Spencer's brand, woodchippers, bats, and blowtorches.
	No, I think there's a, if anything, a very clever advert by their opposition to make you not want to go to Marks and Spencer.
	This is the kind of person that shops at Marks and Spencer.
	Okay, great.
	I'm going to Iceland.
	I used to shop there.
	Oh, it's little for us.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Anywhere else that doesn't do this, I'm going to go to.
	Right.
	So, um, so I thought we'd talk about just, um, there we go.
	So this is their rationale for this, that this came out just before the controversy, right?
	So Anna Braithwaite, the clothing and home marketing director at Marks and Spencers.
	Anna Braithwaite.
	I feel that she was probably accurately represented in the advert.
	So she said the company had made the ad for a similar budget last year and the change of tag reflected customer research, which indicated a desire to just relax and switch off of over Christmas after a tough year.
	There's a lot of pressure on people with higher interest rates, mortgage payments, and everyone feels the pinch, but our customers absolutely love Christmas and they just want to protect it.
	So you made a video of rich people destroying Christmas.
	That's like the worst thing they could have possibly done.
	It's the actual opposite of what their market research told them.
	I know, it's quite extraordinary.
	They did everything but bar humbug, didn't they, in that?
	Everything but bar humbug.
	See, you know, a little kid, Tiny Tim, you know.
	Mum!
	Like, you know, that's the only thing missing.
	Like, a genuine sort of... They've taken the Scrooge position, the villain, the antagonist, in Dickens' Christmas Carol and made them the heroes.
	Why's Auntie Jane on the roof?
	Destroying Christmas.
	Just be quiet, child.
	You know?
	What's missing from that is a Marks and Spencer's executive taking the pennies off of someone's eyes, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Basically, yes.
	Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
	But again, just of all the things like, okay, yeah, everyone's feeling the pinch because everything's become more expensive and everyone's struggling.
	Yeah.
	So we've got the richest, most spoiled people that we can find, and we're going to make them denigrate your Christmas because you absolutely love it and want to protect it.
	Absolutely prosperous.
	I don't know what you guys think about this.
	Are Waitrose, Sainsbury's and everybody else suddenly, emergency, having midnight meetings to withdraw the adverts they've done on the same thing?
	Well, I mean, if... My God!
	Let's look at it again!
	If they were clever, they'd be like, look, we need an advert out in two days, and it's going to be the most wholesome, Christmassy thing.
	Santa Claus is going to deliver all the presents, everyone's going to have a massive turkey, and it'll be a poor, indigenous British family, and they're going to get together, And they're going to be like, this is amazing.
	Thank you, Waitrose, Eisenhower, Tesco, whatever.
	You will clean up.
	You would, wouldn't you?
	Get fronted by Ricky Gervais or something like that.
	Don't go to Marston.
	They hate you.
	Jeremy Clarkson or someone like that.
	Even better, you know?
	And so... I'm still not convinced that the marketing department for Marks and Spencer's hasn't been infiltrated by Waitrose or one of their competitors.
	It's a very good hypothesis.
	I would suggest that anyone with the name Anna Braithwaite, uh, actually doesn't need 4D chess and is just living their authentic life, which is represented by that woman there.
	Um, anyway, so you would think that actually the anti-British nature, anti-Christmas nature, again, one of, one of the few sacred times of the year that we actually have left, right?
	Even though Christmas, of course, heavily commercialized, blah, blah, blah.
	It's still got the underlying essence of this is when the British get together with their And spend time with each other and show each other they love each other.
	So you would think that would be a cause for outrage.
	You know, people were hang on a second.
	What are you doing?
	Why are you?
	Why are you trying to encourage these childless singletons and divorced mothers to burn their Christmas and be all about themselves?
	They miss beating up grandma.
	They missed a trick.
	Instead, that wasn't the outrage about this, right?
	Apparently the British public didn't care and everyone's like, yeah, well, you know, we've been dumped on every single day in every single way and every other time, as we've shown earlier on the podcast.
	No, the outrage was because, and they had to clip this out, so you didn't see this while watching it, but apparently there was a Palestinian flag in it and it got burned in the fireplace.
	Now, I'm gonna, they've got an image here, There isn't a Palestinian flag.
	Oh yeah, the hats that have come in those colours for such a long time.
	Silver is not on the Palestinian flag.
	No.
	So this advert was filmed in August.
	Before the Hamas attack on Israel.
	And obviously this is the woman takes the things off her head and throws them into the fire.
	So great.
	So none of that was offensive.
	It was only offensive because it vaguely resembled the colors of a Palestinian flag.
	And that's the current thing right now.
	Let me ask you something.
	Were Italians offended?
	Exactly, it's a lot more like an Italian flag.
	Or Mexicans.
	Zero Mexicans or Italians.
	Zero Mexicans or Italians.
	It kind of looks like the colours of the Palestinian flag though.
	Palestine has now trademarked those colours.
	They're the only country that's allowed to use them.
	Apparently.
	I mean, Mark Suspense was like, no, we were trying to dump on Britain.
	We didn't mean to dump on Palestine.
	Like, we're so sorry.
	It was collateral damage, wasn't it?
	Yeah, exactly!
	We didn't know this was going to be the current thing when we filmed the advert.
	We thought it was totally safe to burn British Christmas.
	It's unbelievable how this country is.
	And this is just another just accurate representation in a microcosm of all of the problems of this country.
	I don't give a damn if that was a Palestinian flag, you know, I'd be like, okay, that's a weird political thing to insert.
	Why would they add that in the first place?
	Yeah, but they wouldn't obviously, but even if it wasn't like, okay, that's, that's weird, but I'd really have a problem with your attacking Christmas.
	I don't care about Israel or Palestine, you know, but like, it's just, what are we doing?
	As an entire civilization.
	And this is again, these, these Christmas adverts provide a kind of snapshot of where the country is at and are trying to represent essentially role models, you know, which is why the only family you got to see was Caribbean.
	You know, they're the only people who get to have wholesome role models on TV anymore.
	But of course, Marks and Spencer put out a groveling, groveling apology to the Palestinian activists.
	Today, we shared an outtake image from Christmas Clothing and Home Ad, but it was recorded in August.
	It showed traditional festive red and green and silver Christmas paper party hats and a fire grate.
	That sentence, it showed traditional festive red, green and silver paper hats and a fire grate.
	Yeah, that's the problem.
	You're literally burning the tradition.
	You're like, sorry, no, no, no.
	We were just burning the tradition.
	We weren't attacking Palestine.
	We're so sorry for any unintentional hurt caused.
	We're not sorry for the intentional hurt.
	That was on purpose.
	We did all of this on purpose.
	We didn't know that Palestine would be the current thing.
	Has Hamas released a statement about market suspenses yet?
	I can only imagine.
	I can only imagine.
	But as you can see, the replies being like, I can't believe you're banning the Palestinian flag.
	And it's just like, I think it was a good, clever get-out, actually, in some way.
	How in the hell did we dig ourselves out of this hole?
	Let's apologize to Palestine.
	Oh, you're quite right.
	I say Mexico.
	Why not Mexico?
	Yeah, I mean, there are people like this entire thing was a vile attack on English culture, but sure, use that as the excuse to pull it.
	Clever, because it took the focus right away from the real truth of the matter.
	Yeah.
	That that is a disgusting advert.
	But at least, as you can see, the people in the replies, they at least get it.
	Like, sorry, what are you doing?
	You're attacking our culture and you're apologizing to the Palestinians for a tangential, apparent reference, which obviously wasn't there.
	Unbelievable.
	But anyway, so just to finish this off, we were talking about role models on The Lads Hour yesterday, which was a really good episode, because it's not just, of course, British role models, it's role models for young men, role models everywhere are being deliberately denigrated.
	And one thing that came out of this I thought was really interesting is how Zoomers look at male role models.
	I don't know about yourself, but when I was growing up, The traditional male role model was a conquering hero, right?
	The hero wins, he gets the girl and he rides off into the sunset.
	That's the point.
	The Zuma male role model is encapsulated in, um, what's that guy's name?
	Ryan Gosling.
	Right.
	Is the noble loser.
	He loses and just has to endure the loss.
	And that was, that's what's been internalized by the guys in their twenties.
	Whereas I'm in my forties.
	And so I'm like, why the hell would you celebrate that guy?
	You know, but that's what their culture is now.
	And it's the same sort of thing that is happening with this advert.
	You know, it's like internalize your, your culture has been destroyed and it's been lost.
	It's been burned and you just have to be the noble loser at this point.
	Yeah and I'm sorry I'm not a noble loser, I'm a really terrible loser.
	I don't think that she's a noble loser because she seems quite happy that the cult tradition is being eroded.
	She's not part of the traditional British culture as she's showing here, she doesn't have a family, she doesn't care.
	So does she think she's a loser?
	No, no, she's, she's part of the winning team.
	But we, the people, the traditional people of Britain have got to sit there and just go, yeah, no, we're going to, we're going to be noble losers about it.
	And this is like, I didn't even know before we started doing this, this is the mindset of the zoomers, the younger millennials.
	Like it just, but it totally is.
	I'm so right.
	Okay.
	Well, we have to change that completely.
	You know, I'm not having this noble loser attitude.
	I'm completely and utterly out of my depth.
	My hero was Freddie Truman and Peter May.
	I have no idea who they are.
	Exactly.
	Both 1950s cricketers.
	But did they win?
	They did a lot of winning.
	Some losing, yeah.
	But I mean, fiery Fred Truman was every boy's hero, the fast bowler.
	I knew him personally, top bloke.
	At the end of their stories, were they considered to be losers or winners?
	Winners.
	Of course.
	The Zoomers, Ryan Gosling, he loses everything.
	He's the loser in every film.
	I'm sorry, can somebody explain Zoomer?
	The younger generation, 25 and younger.
	Okay.
	Their male heroes are just people who stoically accept their own loss.
	Whereas that to me is just not a good ideal for anything.
	And this is essentially what is being portrayed to us in this.
	It's just, no, you just have to accept that these people get to burn your traditions.
	They get to burn your, they get to make you a loser, burn your traditions.
	It's all this degeneration and denigration of what it is to be ourselves.
	And I'm very tired of it and I'm not having any of it.
	Sorry, Jon.
	Should we go to some of the comments?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So for my segment, Lord Nerevar says, a small part of me wishes I could be at the Cenotaph next week.
	The part that wishes for honor and duty to defend my country.
	Just a small part, but it's there.
	That's nice to hear.
	Biggie Bigfoot, interesting name.
	When the inevitable terrorist attack happens, and it happens, it will happen sooner rather than later, how would you suppose the woke pro-Palestine We'll react.
	Surely, that will put them between a rock and a hard place.
	They will say it's self-defense, like they did with Hamas attacking Israel in the first place.
	It would be a difficult sell, though, considering we're not really involved.
	You'd think that Hamas butchering a bunch of Israeli party-goers would be a difficult sell, but apparently it wasn't.
	Yeah, well, those people are out of their mind, aren't they?
	So, Ethelstan95, I think it's scary how even seemingly moderates are appearing to become radicalized.
	I thought Majid Nawaz was an English liberal and a Muslim, but he's now talking about the Ummah and the black flag, defending his former organization and the Met Police's use of the word Jihad.
	There is a religious doctrine called Takiyah in which it is a duty to lie to non-believers to advance the cause.
	I wonder how much manipulation is going on.
	I think I did some digging into Takiyah actually and it's the, I forget which Islamic sect.
	Isn't it Shia?
	It's one of the two, isn't it?
	Yeah, and that is to avoid persecution.
	Yeah.
	So it's got a very specific usage.
	I'm not, you know, trying to defend them.
	It is possible that some people are just bad.
	Specifically in the case of Nadja Nawaz, I think, I don't think he's been advocating.
	I think he's trying to enlighten, as in when there's a black flag raised over a particular mosque, this means something significant.
	I saw a tweet from him.
	I don't think he's in favor of it.
	I think he's just trying to warn us.
	I haven't actually seen any of it, but I can believe it.
	Go look on his Twitter feed.
	It was instructive.
	I didn't take from it that he's in favor of these things.
	I took from it that he's warning us of these things.
	Okay, as in he's trying to translate to people who wouldn't have Western.
	Yeah, you Westerners don't know this, but that's important.
	Citizen philosopher, Detroit.
	The religion of Islam as a whole has a mindset towards conquest as a sort of evangelism by the blade.
	To anyone not deeply entrenched by the leftist paradigm, it's fairly obvious that our institutions have a weakness towards cry-bullying.
	That's perfectly true, yes.
	It only makes sense to a supposed evangelical Muslim, pretend to be offended and the white people will conquer themselves for you.
	Yeah, I mean, it's undeniable at this point, isn't it?
	What more is to be said on that?
	So, Kevin Fox says, since October the 7th, Islamophobic hate crime is up 140%, anti-semitic hate crime is up 1,395%, and yet we still have Islamophobia Awareness Month.
	Muslims playing the victim card to police whilst kicking seven bells out of a rabbi again.
	Yes, that is a good point.
	I think the exchange between the two there is not proportionate at all.
	No, the numbers aren't proportionate.
	I was just going to say, if you look at the number of, I don't know about America, but I know that there are significantly fewer Jews in this country than there are Muslims.
	Significantly fewer.
	So that would probably translate into what is actually a ridiculous non-crime anyway.
	So it's all nonsense.
	There are significantly fewer Welshmen in this country than there are Muslims.
	There are more Muslims in this country than Welshmen.
	When you put it like that, it's horrifying.
	There are three million Welshmen.
	Yes, well, there would be, wouldn't there?
	Why would you leave the lovely Welsh Valleys, apart from Drakeford in Cardiff or the people in Bury, but mid-Wales, north Wales, you wouldn't leave, would you?
	I wouldn't leave.
	Isn't that just crazy that there are more Muslims in England than Welshmen are in Wales?
	I'd much rather the Welshman.
	I've never met a Welshman that hasn't been nice.
	Yeah, yeah, obviously.
	But like, why should that be the case?
	Why should there be more Muslims in Britain than Welsh?
	It strikes me as bold.
	It is.
	I have to say, that is pretty extraordinary.
	Jacob Bogdanoff, it's blindingly obvious this whole Islamophobia awareness circus is trying to salvage Muslim voters' support lost due to unanimous support of Israel in conflict with Palestine.
	Assuming it wasn't already pre-planned, as in we don't have a yearly thing.
	Probably, yeah.
	I don't know how old the Islamophobia awareness is.
	I also don't want to take it seriously because it's also just a silly day and as Stelios showed us.
	Sillier days that we should have spent time on.
	Again, I'm really doing my best to make people aware that this should be Islamophobic.
	I've only got one podcast.
	I don't know what more I could do.
	Spent the three years working for you, doing my best Karl.
	We've got a great team, but again it's just one institution.
	Andrew Narog, the Muslims definitely know our weakness and it's weakness and lack of integrity of our media class.
	For one, I heard NPR, the US public radio, refer to Hezbollah as just a Lebanese militia group with zero mention of the fact they're a designated terrorist organization.
	The mainstream media is naught but spineless snakes.
	Should we go on to the next?
	Yes, I was about to say.
	Okay.
	HR Slave.
	My granddad served in World War II.
	He lost nearly his entire unit in Normandy, barely making it back himself.
	I'll always remember how, even well into his 90s, he always made the effort to go down to the Cenotaph and pay his respects.
	It breaks my heart to think about how far we have fallen, given how much men like him sacrificed for this country.
	Zombie Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
	That's a great name.
	Zombie Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, throwing racist slurs from beyond the grave, says... Is that his full name?
	That's the full title of the commentary.
	A lot of all these cancellations of our country's days is just Labour councils trying to tear its values.
	In Manchester, they've cancelled bonfire events across the area, citing lack of fans.
	Yet they spend thousands of pounds on events on diversity.
	Let's also not forget that November 5th is Celebration of the Royal Family, quashing a Republican assassination, and Labour votes are notoriously Republican.
	Kevin Fox, the poppy brought out the most poignant piece of TV the BBC, before it became biased, ever showed.
	The final episode of Blackadder goes fourth.
	Have you seen that, Stelios?
	I've watched some parts of Blackadder.
	I don't remember the specific one.
	One thing that would be worth watching to get a feel on how people of my sort of era understand World War I is to watch Blackadder the fourth one.
	Because the final episode is genuinely harrowing.
	Isn't the first one in the medieval period?
	Yeah.
	Ryan Reducted.
	Godfrey is absolutely right.
	We have learned nothing.
	We should be keeping out of where we don't belong.
	We are wasting young men's lives for nothing but foreign interests.
	And Baron von Warhoek.
	Remembrance Sunday.
	The government claims they will never forget the sacrifice that the young boys of England gave to protect their homes and families from Kaiser, Bill, Hitler and Tojo.
	Yet they spend every day pissing on their memory by destroying the things they died for.
	It's sickening.
	He says, uh, this is no ordinary cultural subversion.
	This is MNS cultural subversion, which is very true.
	Yeah.
	Alex says, sorry Carl, I think you're tearing apart the Marks and Spencers ad but entirely missed the point.
	M&S understand their target audience perfectly.
	Champagne socialists with lots of disposable income, with no love or duty to anything except themselves and their communities.
	I shop at M&S, hang on a minute.
	Well I did before it closed down.
	I had suspicions, I thought you were.
	Yeah right, he looks the type doesn't he?
	Yeah he does, a bit fishy.
	I don't like champagne or socialism.
	M&S struggled to make themselves relevant on the high street recently and this shows that once again they have proven why they are a brand that needs to die.
	Uh, Ewan says, it couldn't be any more anti-Christmas.
	Christmas isn't about you.
	It's about your family.
	Totally true.
	I agree.
	Genuinely.
	Like I've got four kids and I'm married to four kids.
	So like, there's nothing about Christmas for me, but it's fine.
	That's what it's for.
	All things about children really.
	Yeah.
	It's, it's, it's honestly my favorite time of year because it, you know, you get two of my favorite things, spending time with my family and indulgence.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, what's not to like about it?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Why would you want Christmas to just be about you?
	My parents are coming up, so it means that I've got grandparents to help with the kids.
	Yeah, grandma to do the washing up, generally be abused.
	Yeah, me and my wife can have lions in the morning.
	You know, I can just sleep.
	I know I'm getting old, but I'm genuinely looking forward to it.
	Matt says, do only what you love is do what thou wilt.
	Oh, interesting.
	In the past, the family was the locus of society.
	Traditions, holiday policy, day-to-day life all revolved around family, which is a thread by which community and society are weaved.
	Now the individual is the locus of society around which only the atomized ego, in all of its selfishness and lonesomeness, can revolve while consumerism fills the void interpersonal connection once filled.
	I tell you, we have a much higher quality of commentator than most other broadcasts, as I'm sure is becoming apparent as I read these out.
	I think that's totally true.
	I can't help but feel that our society is being run along French revolutionary principles, where the entire goal is to make each other as atomized as possible and entirely dependent on the state.
	That seems to be the way that Britain is being run.
	There certainly has been a bait and switch between English liberalism and French liberalism, which are very different.
	Completely.
	English liberalism would have the minimal state possible, and yet we've got the largest state we've ever had, with the most tax burden we've ever had, with the most money being paid out to mosques that we've ever had, and I'm just like, okay, something's gone wrong.
	Something's gone terribly wrong here.
	Zombie Philip again says, didn't think you could get worse than having Dawn French doing a Christmas advert, but here we are.
	To be honest with you, I would pay.
	Well, I wouldn't pay, but I'd be, I'd beg for a Dawn French advert.
	You know, at least she was fairly normal.
	You know, she wasn't like burning Christmas cards.
	She did marry Lenny Henry though.
	I mean, that's woke, isn't it?
	How woke can you get?
	No, well, I mean, maybe.
	Anyway, Dawn French knows how to heat a whole gobload of mince pies.
	I'd have put her on if I was trying to sell mince pies.
	I bet Dawn French does quite a good Christmas dinner.
	I mean, look at her.
	Yeah, exactly.
	My kind of girl.
	She's from Plymouth as well.
	There we go.
	Look at the words.
	Black Abseil says, they bastardized meatloaf.
	Unforgivable.
	That's my favorite comment.
	Because the song is about love and he says, but I wouldn't, in a sense, commit adultery.
	So they did the exact opposite here.
	It's like, I would do the good thing.
	Yeah.
	No, no, no.
	You're completely right.
	They've completely reversed the meaning of the song as well.
	Yes.
	It's like, I wouldn't spend time with you.
	Yeah.
	The whole point of that song is to make a commitment to his fidelity to her.
	And in fact, it's the opposite.
	No, no.
	Burn Christmas.
	I'm a cheat, basically.
	I think we've got to get somehow, you chaps got to get that, what's her, Anna Braithwaite is her name, into the studio.
	I don't think she'll come to see her.
	I think hell will freeze over before she'll come to ask you.
	She's probably right.
	I suspect she's going to be a bit hairy if you get my drift.
	Literal or metaphorical sense?
	Probably both.
	I suspect she's going to be from the upper class and she's going to have a chip on her shoulder about how much she feels she's put upon at Christmas and that's the kind of person she's going to be.
	I think she's a Billy No-Mate.
	Fingers crossed.
	Mummy and Daddy had to lay off the help at Christmas and now we all have to do it and I'm angry.
	That's probably what's going on.
	Fodder17 says, when foreign agents actively attack our traditions and culture, at what point does something need to be done?
	Well, that point would pass many years ago, I'm afraid.
	And if action is needed, what can be done?
	Once the people that are here want to destroy us and they're a part of the population, what can we do to clean them up?
	Well, actually quite a lot, but I'm not going to go into it now.
	But first and foremost, it would be really good if people would stop voting for Labour or Conservatives.
	I mean, that's not a controversial take on this podcast, but like, why do the British public love to be beaten by people who hate them?
	I do not understand it.
	Last one, Sam Weston says, following yesterday's Lads Hour, I have a suggestion for potential male role models.
	Matthias from the children's fantasy novels Redwall and Matamio.
	Mattias starts out as quite gawky, but as the story of Redwall progresses, he ultimately becomes a great hero and warrior.
	He uses his wits to defeat Clooney, overcomes fear, and makes alliances with both the Sparrows and the Gwosom Shrews.
	It's protected by his family and friends and good father and loving husband to Cornflower, his loving wife.
	I've never heard of it, so I have got no frame of reference on this ad.
	It's all over my head, but for the suggestion, yeah.
	And I guess the last one by Omar, the miserable and subversive ad, good play on Marks and Spencers, M&S, miserable and subversive ad, is doing that lefty cope thing where they're being spiteful and angry, but I'm totally happy and content, I swear.
	That's another great point as well.
	Yeah.
	We're so happy that we're burning of things like, are you the happy people burn their traditions?
	There's a bit of dissonance between stated and revealed preference there, isn't there?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, I think we're pretty much out of time, are we not?
	I think so.
	Well, I forgot how to do the outro now, but normally we thank the guests for joining us.
	Yes.
	Thank you, Godfrey, for joining us.
	What a pleasure.
	Thank you for the audience for watching, and I suppose you can join us same time on Monday.

▲