Dave Rubin hosts the first-ever Fan Show, featuring twenty global guests who critique modern feminism, secularism, and regressive left ideologies. Listeners from London to Japan discuss cultural Marxism, free speech suppression in universities, and the failures of government-run healthcare systems. The conversation spans Turkey's internal conflict, Brazil's conservative resurgence, and the dangers of "democratership," ultimately arguing that true liberty requires individual rights over group-based entitlements and a rejection of victimhood culture. [Automatically generated summary]
In case you missed it, a couple weeks back, I had asked you guys to let me know why I should interview you, and I gotta tell you guys, you did not disappoint me.
We got almost 1,200 responses within a week and ended up selecting 20 of you instead of the original five that we had intended.
We're gonna release these over the course of a couple weeks, each video with a few eight to 10 minute interviews.
Many of you guys wrote incredible essays on what's going on in your life and in your corner of the world.
I promise you that we read every single entry.
It took us a long time, and it was incredibly difficult to make the decision of who to choose.
We did our best to pick an eclectic mix of people from all over the world.
On a personal note, I just want to say how truly, truly awed and humbled I am by your submissions.
The fact that you guys watch this show, share it with friends and family, and are engaging in the battle of ideas yourself really makes putting myself out there worthwhile.
I'm honored, really, to have such an incredible fan base that not only is connecting with me, but with each other as well.
Clearly, you guys all recognize that we're in this together, and that talking about the important issues honestly is the only way to move forward as part of the human race.
All right then, the first ever Rubin Report Fan Show is here!
Well, Dave, the problem is feminism in 2016 isn't the feminism that once was.
I think we know from Milo Yiannopoulos and Christina Hoff Summers, who have promoted it amazingly well, this idea that modernist feminism has become akin to man-hating.
It has, it has.
And I myself, having been brought up in a family of mostly females with my dad, of course, bless his heart, I know the value of being a strong, independent woman, as cliche as it sounds.
And that doesn't involve safe spaces.
That doesn't involve shying away from debate.
You know what it involves?
It involves being equal to a man.
It involves working to be equal.
So, you know, everything about this whole safe space concept is extremely dangerous because these people, these people, these students, universities, like myself, they will be subject to modally cuddling, to being told they are victims all the time.
And I imagine you're being constantly told you're a victim.
What is that going to do to your mentality?
That's extremely damaging.
And that is what modernist feminism is doing to women all the time.
And it's depressing because We are meant to be for gender equality.
So why are we telling these women, why are we telling females everywhere that you can't do this?
That this mystical force, the patriarchy, is supposedly oppressing us.
And I say this obviously, patriarchy is a serious issue in countries such as the Middle East and India, for instance.
But in the West, you know, I can walk out of my house without a mail minder and it's fine.
Yeah, so you're telling me you're safe when you walk out of your house in London, you can make it to the store without a man, and you can do that on your own?
I mean, sometimes I do get a bit of a panic attack coming up, because I feel like sometimes the wolf whistles are going to come at me, and then I'm going to be triggered, and then it's just going to be horrific.
But, you know, I just manage it.
I just manage it, Dave.
And the sad thing is, is that this is extremely patronising to women.
And you know what?
We have fought for equality.
Why are we shying away?
This takes three steps backwards.
This is ridiculous.
And the thing is, With modern day feminism, like I said, it doesn't support men's needs as well.
If we want gender rights, if we want gender equality, we have to consider things that they aren't addressing.
Now, from what I previously stated, the patriarchy.
Now, feminists like to consider it an oppressive force on females, and they like to paint it on Western females as well, not just those that are generally oppressed.
Now, I would say the patriarchy is doing a bloody bad job at Benefiting the oppressors.
If we look at the endemic of male suicides, for instance, if we look at the rates of male to female ratios of going into university, especially in the UK, it's atrocious.
And I can't help but feel that these modern day feminists are fighting battles that are already won in the West.
You know, a newspaper here in the UK, The Guardian, I'm sure you're a big fan of those lovely articles.
There's always a fairly good discussion on... It's like a diamond in the rough, but for the most part, it has become sort of clickbait.
Guess what we're going to appropriate today?
What's sexist today?
How can I be a victim today?
And it's so disempowering.
You know, I want to read articles about women making it in the world, which we do, which we do because we are equal to men and we should be so proud of it.
So why are we shying away from that?
Why are we teaching these students that, you know, men are horrible creatures, which is something I detest because we are equal.
And when I say equal, we are not the same because we are biologically different.
And again, we should be so proud of that.
We should be proud that we feel each other's differences.
Yeah, all right, so we gotta pause there, because you're giving me a lot.
I love it, and you know I'm on board with most of these ideas, and you know what, I promise you, I'm gonna send this to Christina directly, so she can listen to this.
I've been told to check my privilege because apparently I'm not oppressed enough.
I'm not oppressed enough as a woman.
And apparently there are other women out there in the West that are suffering from the patriarchy that I am yet to be aware of.
I think they should also talk to the working class ex-coal miner in Yorkshire who is currently suffering and can barely afford his council flat tax, you know?
There's a slight discrepancy in their logic, and they don't see this.
And I can totally empathize with what they're trying to do.
They're trying to find some good.
They're trying to do something.
I can see the intentions, but good intentions don't always mean good results, you know?
I'll link them, say, peer-reviewed studies suggesting, perhaps, that the pay-wage gap has nothing to do with a mystical patriarchy, but is merely to do with job preferences as one of the factors.
And they'll just dismiss it as saying, oh, it's just a one-off case.
But how many one-off cases can you use as an excuse for that?
It's strawmanning, to say the least.
And they're trying to fight a battle which has already been won, as Christina has already said many times.
And it's sad because as much as we use the regressive left meme trope, so to speak, and it's very true.
It's very true.
I try not to think that it's most of the left because, you know, I'm very much a liberal on ideas.
I believe in equality.
I believe in gay marriage.
I believe all of that.
And I believe in freedom of expression.
I believe in exchange of ideas.
And I truly believe with free exchange of ideas, you can empathize with people.
You can see why people think the way they think.
And there's less hatred, there's less tension, because you're able to understand one another, which is ultimately an amazing thing to do in such a globalized world.
And it's hard to do that when you just focus solely on emotion and not logic and rationality, because then you can misinterpret something, you can say it's racist, you can say it's bigoted, when it's perfectly an innocent statement.
It's probably a statistic that has suddenly magically turned out to be racist.
I'm an atheist myself, huge fan of the secular movement.
I think we are very, very fortunate to be living in mostly a secular world with exceptions, and I'm glad we are doing a lot of work towards fixing that.
However, I do think there is a sinister smugness in the atheist movement, and I do think it's connected to some of the far left, because it's very interesting how some of these people swap, say, a religion for their own ideology, a fervent ideology based on the patriarchy or based on imaginary things, and it's very religion-like.
So, in an essence, suddenly swapping religion, and I'm not anti-religion, I might be atheist, but I'm not anti-religion at all.
I think there's a lot to be said for some of the cultural things, like the Anglican Church for the United Kingdom has given us culture, it's given us art, it's given us an explosion of things we can't deny.
So, one must be careful when criticising belief, which is totally fine, and not the believer, and the benefits of what that belief has given us.
But I do also think that some of these people go a very Marxist route, so they do believe that religion is the opiate of the people, say, and they completely exchange logic and reason for their own ideology.
So it's not like an atheist has become an atheist because they've Discovered science, or they've, you know, read more of Dawkins, they've become an atheist, sort of as a result of the ideology through the cultural Marxism that is being perpetuated in a lot of the academia nowadays.
That's, that's how I'm, that's why I'm worried about that route.
But for the most part, you know, I'm, I'm perfectly, perfectly joyous at a secular movement.
Well, we have a lot to talk about because we've talked a bit about Turkey on the show and you sent us a great email with explaining some of your frustrations with Turkey, some of the good things with Turkey.
Well, there's literally no integration because I mean millions of people keep coming to Turkey
and you cannot shut down the border.
You cannot just say that we are not welcoming you.
So we have to accept them but they're coming By millions and like they're on the streets and there's a lot of social problems like a lot I see I started seeing in different cities in Anatolia like beggars on the streets like people living on the streets and refugee camps and that kind of stuff and also I want to say that like people say Turkey but Turkey is a really big country and
For example, the Syrian border is roughly a thousand kilometers away from me.
So I don't see that, I don't feel that effect of ISIS and that kind of, but cities on the border suffer the most.
I'm kind of okay, but Palestinians who've come later do have some issues, especially with, like you said, and the legal system, they're not fully protected, so to speak.
How do you feel in terms of, so you emailed me, you're doing this right now, like just in the general terms of being able to speak your mind and not worry about government coercion or anything like that, like do you feel pretty comfortable?
Well, I'll just start out by saying, like, even your distinction is sometimes a bit blurry.
Even when you separate Muslim people to add the doctrine of Islam, I think there's still some muddy areas in between.
Sure.
I mean, sure, all of us want to be nice and peaceful, but at the same time, when you're in a conflict and you expect the other side to be as nice as you, that's, I think, a bit silly.
You don't walk up to a lion with a flower and expect it.
So, uh... the the western apologist is my problem with them is
by focusing on the business directs the problems of the issues
and as if it's like you know it's not as bad you know i'm sure
people like reza aslan and the young turks sorry for bringing that up
what they practically do is the the effects on the
the good people like yourself and the classical liberals or whoever is
genuinely caring about what's happening in the middle east and the muslim
majority countries they take the conversation away and it alleviates this uh...
sense of urgency They just kill it like if you wanted to help and then you hear someone who claims to be a scholar and like he knows everything on the inside and they tell you that no, it's all fine.
Then you just think, yeah, I don't feel the urge to help anymore.
Right, so in a way, so you're in like a particularly, I guess, tenuous situation because you're clearly, I assume you identify as a classical liberal or a liberal or some western-ish something.
You stand for basically western values, I sense, right?
And you sort of need the help of the outsiders to make change there because it would be very hard to do on your own, right?
When you think there's no problem, then, well, what are you gonna do?
The problem's gonna keep on escalating until it just blows up.
So I don't... it's a tough question, I think, because, I mean, sure, the help would be needed, but, you know, not ruining it for us would be also appreciated.
Well, my day-to-day life isn't really a problem for me, but if you look at other segments of society, like women or homosexuals or, you know, any kind of Traditionally marginalized group, because Jordan's still a very patriarchal society, unlike what feminists in the US want to tell you.
I mean, the biggest thing is obviously the refugee crisis and the whole political field that is surrounding that, so kind of our politics is in kind of trouble because we have people who don't agree with established politicians and established politicians fighting each other, so it's really interesting times.
See, Dave, I would say it's not a problem with either the German locals or the migrants
or refugees themselves.
It's a problem with systems.
The government let in all these immigrants who are not necessarily all refugees because there's really no proper control who gets in and who doesn't and they sort it out later in a process that takes months until the whole asylum application goes through.
And then we take in 1.3 million of them But there's no system to give them shelter effectively, to integrate them, to teach them about the German culture.
So what we get is a lot of people bunched up in a really small place who come from different cultures than our home culture and who then form their own little subcultures and don't integrate very well because they have nobody to really talk to except for their own people.
Yeah, so does Germany have sort of a special place in this because of the history with Germany and obviously xenophobia and World War II, and Germany has done a tremendous amount to repair that and the culture has completely changed, I think that's very obvious, but that there's a certain amount of guilt that, so you want to do the right thing and then they come here and then the systems, as you're saying, are just not in place, so it's like the idea doesn't quite match up with the reality of what's going on?
I mean, in Germany we have a certain type of unique political correctness in that we really still have the shame or the guilt and want to redeem ourselves, basically, even though we are almost two generations removed from the events.
But most Germans still feel the need To be proper to other people and to help out others.
So there is this goodwill of helping these people and naturally people who come from civil war ridden areas there is a human feeling of you have to help them out.
But I think the way we are doing it now is really failing those people in need and is also failing the people locally in Germany.
Well, it almost took a few weeks, because the fact that those groups who assaulted the women were mainly immigrants was hidden away from the public, essentially, by political officials and the police.
And the reaction was quite interesting, because people were really afraid and really angry about the situation.
And some on the left, they're the same as leftists in America and try to put it away from Islam as a religion or
culture.
And then on the right, a lot of people blame Islam or Muslims in general for that, which is obviously also way
too extreme.
But kind of the center is missing where we acknowledge the problem that there are cultural differences.
And if you put young males who come from this culture, who have been growing up in this culture, put them in a place
and just let them have their own communities without any integration, then these problems can occur and will occur.
That's why we have no solution for it, because we can't acknowledge the problem.
I mean, there's always a move from the established politicians to ban these few very right-wing parties that we still have in Germany, which are really extreme, at least some of them are.
And they always try to ban them via the legal system.
But now, with the alternative for Germany, the AfD in Germany, that's a new party that has sprung up.
And all this controversy.
And they've become very, very big.
And a lot of people jumped onto that opportunity.
But at the same time, a lot of right-wing extremists obviously jumped on that.
And the established politicians all try to paint this new party, which is more conservative, more right-wing, into the Nazi corner to isolate them.
But what then, of course, happens is that you get a lot of extremists to join that party, and you don't find the real discourse.
In person, we've only met once when I visited him.
We connected through the internet just by chance.
I met him one day and we started talking and talking and talking.
And because we both felt the need to speak out about politics, about philosophy, about our societies, and to discuss how we can make them better, we started having night-long discussions, literally through the night until the sun came back up.
And at some point we, through shows like yours, where you really emphasize the need to make your voice heard, we decided we have to do something.
And we decided to basically start a podcast to get other people in to discuss stuff with us and to develop our opinions openly and to kind of make a difference.
And if every single person that watched this show started their own show and I became completely irrelevant, but the ideas won, I would be I'll be happy to retire on a farm in Wyoming or something.
So one of the phrases that you used in your email to us was the difference between a global network and a local network.
And I thought this concept was really cool because it's very much what we're doing here.
And it's why I wanted to do this fan show.
and we have 20 people, I think, in 18 countries or so, or 15 countries.
So can you describe what you meant by that concept?
So a lot of our local networks, like universities, schools, but cities and even countries are very isolated.
We have a consensus usually in those networks.
Universities in America, for example, you have all the social justice warriors having a real consensus and a lot of power.
So I think as a modern human you can't rely on that to Get a full picture.
So these global networks that are enabled by the Internet are really where it's at, where you can get your ideas challenged, where you can get new ideas, where you can exchange ideas.
And Monica, you know, I got a zillion people that emailed from Paris, but your bio, your bio, just where you've bounced around from, a little bit of your family's history, there was so much there that you were the winner from Paris.
So first off, just tell me, so you told me that you grew up with two atheist parents, but that that was also colored with a Mexican tradition and a Jewish tradition.
So then you bounced around pretty much all over the world.
So can you give me like a one minute synopsis of just where you've bounced around and then we'll dig into some of the things that you want to talk about?
It was really scary, so I still remember the very first time I heard a missile.
I was watching a show on my laptop, and I heard an explosion, and I didn't really think anything of it, and then I heard more explosions, and then there were sirens, and I had no idea what to do.
I was living in a small house that didn't have a bomb shelter, so I ran outside.
My neighbors told me to run into the bomb shelter next door, and I couldn't have known, but then after that, for the following months, it just became the norm.
Like, at least, minimum, seven times a day I would find myself in a bomb shelter, and I was an English teacher at the time, and a lot of our class time was spent learning in bomb shelters.
So that's one of the things that I thought was really interesting.
So you mentioned that basically a lot of people said, oh, we're defending Charlie Hebdo, but that really privately, that's not really what they were doing, right?
So there was like a protest where people went out in the street and they were like holding up pencils.
I didn't want to participate in anything like that because I'm just thinking like the people who shot these cartoonists and shot these artists were not trying to take away their pencils, like they were trying to kill them.
It has nothing to do with your ability to write or draw a cartoon, like they want to murder people.
So I just felt like the reaction was very soft and just very different than the Israeli reaction would have been.
I had the same feeling towards the French reaction that I did for Charlie Hebdo, kind of just disappointment in the lack of, I don't know, like a strong reaction.
I would say probably even more so than in America.
People here are very concerned about being politically correct in a country that has a very high percentage of North Africans and Muslims.
People are very careful to choose their words.
The media is very careful about what they say and how they say it, which is a good thing and a bad thing.
But I would say that now things have kind of died down.
Honestly, people have kind of forgotten about it.
Security is very lax everywhere.
They still have some emergency procedures in place ever since Charlie Hebdo, so it's been almost two years that we've had these emergency procedures They're supposed to be in place, but like private and public security in France is just not where it should be.
So I can't speak too much about the immigration of refugees to France, because honestly, we hear about it on the news, but it doesn't affect me at all.
I don't see them.
It just doesn't play a role in my life.
So I can't really speak on that.
But I have been very involved in the French Jewish community so I know how they feel about The situation in France and in Israel.
So there's kind of this feeling in the French Jewish community.
I don't want to say I'm Not a victim hood, but they're very closed network of people like in the Paris area and They always feel targeted and they feel like Israel is kind of like this El Dorado it's like this thing that they idolize and it's like this ideal utopia that they all want to Yeah.
strive to be a part of.
So every time there's an attack, it's like the percentage of French Jews
that leave France just skyrockets.
But then another interesting phenomenon is that when I was in Israel,
I met so many people who leave Israel after intending to settle there, just like I did.
There's actually a word in Hebrew for that, it's called yaredah.
So aliyah is when you immigrate to Israel to go live there, supposedly forever.
And there's even a word to describe leaving there forever because you just can't handle the quality of life.
So French people encounter that.
They leave hoping to find this network of acceptance and like living amongst Jews just gonna be amazing.
And then they get there and realize that they were kind of sold a dream and a lot come back.
Yeah, so it's sort of like the grass is always greener.
You have it one way and you think, okay, it's going to be better over there.
Yeah.
All right, well, you've given me a lot and we're plowing through all these interviews, but it was a pleasure talking to you and good luck with the rest of your adventures.
Not as libertarian-leaning as I'd like, as a libertarian myself, but I'm working on it.
I work with an organization called Students for Liberty, and I'm currently going through training to be in charge of the Canada Yeah, well, as you know, I've kind of been into libertarianism lately.
I think it's very close to classic liberalism, which is really where I consider myself.
But speaking of your political leanings, my producer told me just a minute before we connected that apparently you're in Breitbart related to something about Milo.
Because I think a certain set of people get that, and then another set think that's something crazy, but I think the bulk of people just don't even understand what that means.
So, a lot of people don't necessarily realize or they're not informed about the fact that men are falling behind or are discriminated against in many ways in today's society, in Canada, in America.
Whether it's the high suicide rates, whether it's the high rates of homelessness, whether it's men kind of getting the short end of the stick legally nowadays with all these rape cases.
And then there's domestic violence, which is also a huge problem, and men really don't
get seen.
And the statistics and the knowledge on the reality of domestic violence isn't really
known to most people.
So I'm more than just an advocate.
I'm an activist.
I lead a men's rights group on my campus at Simon Fraser University, and we host monthly
events inviting different people with different perspectives on men's issues.
We had Karen Strawn and Alison Tiemann last month, and then this coming up month,
we're having a panel discussion event on different perspectives of masculinity
from men going their own way to mythopoetic, which you probably don't know
if you're not into the men's movement.
And then there's the feminist perspective.
So we're gonna have a whole panel discussion.
So it's really about boots on the ground activism and really engaging with people.
So I'm kind of taking the online, I'm one of the people taking the online sphere offline
I think that it gives me a lot of freedom to say what is true without being labelled a misogynist or a sexist or this or that.
I say a lot of things that if some average white guy said it, he would be maligned.
I think my being trans Has helped a lot for our club in the sense that we haven't been protested much, well we haven't protested at all, we haven't got too much backlash and I think it's because in the kind of
Progressive mindset attacking a group that's led by what is in their minds an oppressed minority would be oppressing a minority even further.
So you're sort of like kryptonite in a way to them because they judge you not by your individual ideas, right?
But they're judging you as Solely a trans person, they know the trans person is high on the oppression olympic chart, so then they can't really figure out how to attack you, thus you're able to protect your own ideas.
I mean, it's actually kind of genius and also bonkers.
I realized, when I realized the reality of men's issues and how There isn't much, a lot of spokespeople for men and men who suffer.
I realized that if not me, who, you know?
And who better than a trans woman?
I realized right away the position I'm in and how I would be squandering a really great opportunity.
So I totally I totally use my identity as a trans woman to further men's rights and I'm not really ashamed of it because I want to help men and I want to further the discussion.
Yeah, so obviously I get the part that you've sort of insulated yourself from some of the criticism, but when you do get the criticism, does it feel particularly personal to you because you're trans and that, I talked to another trans person, that's sort of like the thing of the moment?
Yeah, I find women are a lot, it's a lot easier for them to approach,
let's say we're tabling at club days, it's so much easier for them to approach our table
and start discussing and they don't fear.
I find a lot of men are kind of weary.
They're very afraid that they're gonna be judged as a certain, you know, they're gonna be judged
as misogynistic or sexist or why are you associating with those people?
Yeah, it's actually quite a bit easier to attract women.
But then when I hear about the men who do come talk to us, the men who kind of master up the bribery,
I, I hear quite horrible stories, uh, you know, from being, you know, horribly abused by their girlfriends or having narcissistic mothers, uh, and, uh, abuse of fathers.
And I'm just, I hear, I hear really the truth of what's going on.
Uh, and yeah, I would encourage men to, um, Uh oh.
to approach us more, because we are in that sense kind of a safe space, if you will.
So, you know, when you get out of school, is this something that you want to pursue at a career level, or are you interested in other things altogether?
All right, well listen, we could obviously do a lot more, but unfortunately we gotta cut it short, so I really enjoyed talking to you, and good luck with everything.
After that, we had our first democracy after many years of going through generals and dictators, basically.
And so we had Obasanjo, who became president.
And he ruled, but he was also corrupt in many ways.
And he's also from the same tribe that I am in Nigeria.
But many from my part of Nigeria, especially my dad, did not like him because he was not a fair man.
We had that, but now we're a country that's struggling a lot.
We just had our president go to the UK for some anti-corruption talks, and he's trying to get back some money because the country's been really hammered by previous regimes, basically.
I'm a big supporter of Brexit as a Nigerian, I'm a big supporter of Brexit as a first generation immigrant, and I'm a big supporter of Brexit as a British citizen.
And it rests essentially on this principle.
I asked myself this question, if I was in Nigeria, and I found that the The Nigerian political system was controlled by another political system that was based in Cairo, that's in Egypt, and they passed our laws, they told us what to do with our fishes and in our waters and all that kind of stuff.
I'd be upset about that.
I'd say that's not fair.
We can't.
Nigerians should have control over their own laws and over their own Borders and everything.
So I look at it from a point of view, if I was a Nigerian, living in Nigeria, and this was happening to Nigeria, how would I feel?
And take it to the UK now, that is exactly what is happening to the UK.
We have a situation whereby we have a European Commission that is not elected, but passes a law that we have to abide to, and we cannot vote them out of office.
So it's essentially a sort of a dictatorial system of sorts.
Yeah, so how much of your feelings about that is fueled by just the border situation?
Because one of the things, I think we've done about 12 interviews now, and one of the things that almost everyone has wanted to talk to me about in Europe is the immigration stuff and the border stuff and the migrant stuff and all that.
So how much of your feeling is just wrapped up just in that you want the UK to be able to control its own borders?
I think that's a very essential part of the Brexit argument.
The border situation is tangential to the real issue.
And I guess since I'm not an indigenous British, the way I feel about immigration might be slightly different.
But I have a lot of sympathy to the indigenous who are saying that they feel the sense that the country has been overwhelmed and they have no control over it.
So I have an appreciation and I sympathize with that.
My biggest problem is that if we do not give nations control over their borders, it will
lead to a situation of social tensions.
And as someone who is an immigrant, and I'm black, in case you don't know.
So as someone who is an immigrant, I feel like if you create so much social tension
within the system, there will be a backlash.
And so my biggest worry about this whole EU control and the control the EU puts on different nations is that it doesn't allow nations to act autonomously.
So it doesn't give them that sort of self-will to do things.
And that leads to frustration.
And that's why we see the rise of the far right and the far left in Europe now.
So as a first-generation immigrant, it's really interesting.
You're framing this not only from your perspective, but you are looking at the people that live there before you and saying that they have some legitimate fears, or maybe some of it's not fully legitimate, but you're acknowledging it.
I'm curious, has some of the sort of regressive ideology I like to say this.
that affected you in that I think most people would probably look at you and say that you're black
and that you're an immigrant and that you should be for fully open borders or something along those lines.
I like to say this, I'm a fair-minded person and I also like to deal with the realities of life.
So, back in Nigeria, where I'm from, in the late 80s, we had a massive influx of immigration from Ghana, which is another West African nation, into Nigeria, because they had an economic downturn.
But that put a lot of pressure on jobs and services in Nigeria, and there became this chant, you know, this movement called Ghana Must Go.
Now, that wasn't a sort of a racist movement, but In that, I could see and appreciate that whenever you have a massive influx of immigration, uncontrolled immigration, it's another place, it leads to social tensions.
And you can look at it throughout history and throughout everywhere in the world.
And so we have to deal with this fairly.
I'm pro-immigration.
Immigration is good.
But it has to be controlled.
It has to be sensible.
And it has to be at the behest and at the will of the people.
If not, it's going to lead to trouble.
And that's where I think this discussion needs to be had.
Okay, we're going to get into a little bit of that.
I knew that actually.
But so one of the things that you wanted to discuss with me was how regressive attitudes and this ideology had really infected Brazil and how you saw it change attitudes in Brazil.
So you're saying basically in the last 10 years, as a result of this regressive ideology taking root, that now conservatism is bubbling up and that is what is defending free speech.
It sounds a little backwards for the way America is, although right now I see that happening here, because strangely it's conservatives that are defending free speech and the left that's trying to stifle it.
Yeah I totally agree with you and I'm not sure if there's a direct effect of that or if it's just people really When they read about new ideas, they get interested, even if they don't agree initially, when they have the freedom to do it.
So there are some thinkers, some writers in Brazil that 10 years ago started writing some stuff, and that's when actually I started reading more about conservatism, more about America, the free speech ideas, the individual rights, and the idea of you're able to say whatever you want, and you're fine.
If you don't like it, that's fine.
That's fine to not like it.
And that's not the way in Brazil before.
And I saw, for example, journalists actually having to move away from Brazil in order to be able to speak.
Well, initially I started reading Brazilian writers, and one of them was a philosopher
called Bolavo de Carvalho.
He currently lives in Virginia.
He's a well-known philosopher, well-known writer in Brazil, who actually had to move
away.
He's one of them, and he lives in Virginia, US.
He's a big fighter against communism, against socialism in Brazil, a for free speech guy.
After starting reading his stuff, I then started reading American writers like Thomas Sowell,
Henry Hazlitt, and Von Mises, other guys from other countries as well.
Von Mises from the Chicago school, Milton Friedman.
More recently, I've been reading a lot of things that Dinesh D'Souza writes.
So, there are a few conservatives, and they, usually these guys, they defend free speech, they defend free exchange of ideas, and some of them were actually leftists before, like David Horowitz was a hardcore leftist, Thomas Sowell was a leftist, and they, when they got in contact with the ideas of conservatives, they kind of leaned the other direction.
Yeah, I've really been doing my best to get Thomas Sowell on the show.
I don't know how much public stuff he does anymore, but I'm working on it, so stay tuned on that one.
Okay, so you move up here, and you've already seen the damage that these ideologies have done in your home country, so what do you make of what they're doing to America right now?
I'm glad that I still live in a country that is very free, that I'm not afraid like I was in Brazil.
People in Brazil are afraid of speaking out things against the government, for example.
Yeah.
Here, no.
I feel comfortable.
I'm very active on Facebook and I usually try to use the experience that I have in Brazil and post to my American friends so they can see the parallel.
To try to avoid it, it would be horrible to see an American go in that direction.
In Brazil, we have free healthcare, meaning the government takes over everything.
And that's exactly where I see people dying for lack of basic care.
People waiting in lines for six months to get an MRI when they have cancer.
They die in line.
That's very common.
And I believe that, as anything else in life, when the free market is able to work, it works better than the government.
So, I think in that sense we're going in the wrong direction.
America has a very good healthcare.
We have problems that can be solved.
We have to sit down and see what the best policy is to get.
But I think the fundamental idea is that we should go towards more free market because competition makes prices go down, makes things more available, services more available.
I want a system that gives us iPhone, new TVs, new cars for cheap.
I don't want a system where to give my healthcare to bureaucrats who spend $1 billion to make a website that doesn't work.
I think the hospital, we haven't had the hit from Obamacare yet, but I see a lot of people who work as an office outside with patient schedule, outpatient, retiring because they just can't handle it anymore.
I see a lot of regulations coming in, increasing the prices, because every single regulation, every single pile of new rules, costs.
So, when you get more government in between patients and physicians, you have bureaucracy, you have more costs, so prices go up.
And I've been seeing this, and we don't have the Obamacare fully implemented yet.
I think there are a lot more things to come, and that may make things even worse.
I like hearing that because, you know, we talk about a lot of heavy stuff on the show, but it's nice to know that things are working.
But one of the things that you mentioned you wanted to talk about is the dreaded regressive left and how their ideology is changing society in Switzerland.
Well, the regressive left in Switzerland, or the equivalent of them here, they're not really out there in your face like in other countries, but they actually speak volumes, of course, you know.
I mean, they've always been there, but yeah, they keep on stirring the pot, you know.
I mean, we recently had a case, like in Tel Aviv, that's just around the corner from where I live, in which You know, two boys from a school from Syria with a very strong religious background refused to shake hands with a female teacher.
Yeah, and you know, the reason behind that was because they didn't want to study her dignities by touching her, right?
And this, of course, all stemmed from the father who is preaching at the local mosque.
And yeah, there stood quite controversy here.
And of course, the reactions were huge.
We had the right shouting all the way down there, it's not acceptable, and yadda yadda yadda.
And you had the left playing everything down, saying it's just a handshake.
If you want to go do some handshakes, you can go to the streets and do that.
It's not big of deal at all.
And most of all, they all kept on saying it's not against the law.
It's fine, right?
But I think what annoyed people more and the reason why they were so passionate about the whole ordeal was because the decision of the school by just tolerating that without actually any afterthought, you know, which is quite a regressive thing to do, you know.
And, you know, of course concerns were made, you know, by the people by saying, like, they wanted to start this discussion, you know.
It's not particularly about the handshake itself, which also refused the moderates in our country.
And they just asked themselves, they wanted to start the question, you know, like, what is acceptable in terms of integration?
What is acceptable in terms of religious freedom, you know?
and this basically has been washed out by just saying like, the left saying like, you know, it's not a big deal,
you know, it's just, I mean, and they also interviewed the head teacher from the school
and he also kept on saying it's not against the rules and that's about it, you know,
we just don't wanna put ourselves out there too much, you know, and this annoyed quite a lot of people
because, you know, the reason why they feel passionate about this whole ordeal was not because, you know,
the handshake itself, it's because the discussion which has never been actually made, you know,
this was kind of, you know, a big deal here around.
Well, I think it was more about like, you know, what are the ground rules of integration here?
We just want to talk about that.
And we don't actually want to talk too much into the future because we don't know what actually would happen.
You know, it was just like, let's just talk about it.
And at some point it was just not possible anymore.
And it didn't end at that point, actually.
I mean, the pot kept on stirring and stirring, you know, and there was another recent case in another city in Lucerne.
Which is quite a famous destination here in Switzerland.
But there was actually a dentist, a Swiss dentist, who refused to operate on a patient.
The patient happens to be a Muslim woman, and she refused to give him a handshake because, you know, it's just a thing she doesn't do.
Right.
He refused to operate on her because his argument was, you know, a patient A doctor relationship is based on trust.
If the trust is not there, I cannot, by the best will and by the best capabilities of my conscience, I cannot operate on her, you know.
And of course, this has, you know, blown up again, you know, like people asking, like, haven't you made something like a hypocritical oath or something, you know?
He said, "Yes, I did, but it only counts with emergencies."
And she can choose whoever doctor she actually wants.
Yeah, you can see the other side of the story too, yeah.
I mean, of course, the amount of Americans still pales in comparison to the EU, which the most people, immigrants and so on, come from.
But there are quite a lot of Americans coming here, because Switzerland is a place that is home to many major global companies.
And, of course, eventually they get a chance to come here and lend themselves an expected program.
And after some while they can go back.
And most of my co-workers actually decided to stick around a little bit longer because they learned to appreciate the high wages and the security and the nice infrastructure.
And before I sound too optimistic, too positive about Switzerland, of course there are some bad things here as well, you know, like the depressive Sundays here where everything is closed.
Right.
And I have to tell you a little story.
Sorry about that.
We are also a household now.
We speak a couple of languages, right?
network here around and like to stick around here.
And the thing is, I have to tell you a little story, sorry about that.
We are also a household now.
We speak a couple of languages, right?
And we speak also English.
Before my daughter entered the kindergarten, we had to fill out a form explaining how good
her German was, actually, so she can keep up in the school, you know.
I was just actually, yeah.
It's a sensible thing to do.
And after sending the letter I received from the Department of Education, I received a letter, an annual letter, actually, demanding for me to organize German classes.
Of course, I was actually surprised.
I was calling up and asking what's the reasoning behind this because I do speak Swiss German pretty well, actually, being a citizen and so on.
And she actually was very surprised.
She thought, like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm sorry about that.
I mistook you for someone else because, you know, there are some people who have more issues.
And I thought about that.
Yeah, I my name, Asian, or maybe she thought about Asian people who
do actually have some difficulties learning Swiss German because it's pretty bad. And she told
me actually, "Noah, I thought you're American." Because the American, she told me in private, of
course, the American are, among those people, have most difficulties willing,
they have most difficulties to want to learn Swiss German, actually.
Because one of the reasons is because they just spent, they're just going to be here for five years.
And the other is just that they refuse because, and that's what she said, you know, it's like, yeah, there's actually no need for us to learn, you know, because you can also all speak English, which is actually true.
Most people actually in the area I live do speak English.
It's actually, you know, the reverse thing of the whole thing, you know, I mean, it's like, of course, not all the Americans, I mean, I have many friends here who are Americans, they're not like this, but as I found out, my surroundings is not quite representative, because after, you know, I mean, this whole thing interests me, you know, and after learning more about this, I really found out that there's really something with some Americans here, a not willingness to let themselves assimilate, you know, After calling up my ex-employee who happens to work with the Office of Statistics, he said, like, that's because, you know, they have something like, not all of them, of course, but some of them have something like Special Snowflake Syndrome, you know, like something like that.
Right, and that's really fascinating because it also shows that all this integration stuff and immigration stuff and migrant stuff, it's not just about religion, it's culture, because now you're telling me that Americans are coming there, it's not because of religion that they're not integrating, but it's partly language, only gonna be there for five years, they're used to always speaking English.
Listen, we could go on way longer, and I didn't get to half the stuff I wanted to talk to you about, but we gotta go, so I thank you very much.
Everything is alright here and as long, like I said previously, as long as I have still money in the bank, despite the capital controls being implemented, I can still live.
And show me one household that can live like that.
Just show it to me.
It's impossible.
You can't do that.
And I can say, fine, it's 500 euros, but can you at least tax me slightly less?
But no.
unidentified
Thanks to the memorandums that are being imposed by Merkel, Right, so basically you guys, because of the conditions that the EU helped Greece out with, your taxes are very high, and you have a lot of people that are getting a lot from the government, so there's not a lot to go around.
I was involved in it the moment I heard about the story of Zoe Quinn having sex with one of the journalists in Kotaku when he posted a review of, what was it, Depression Quest?
If I'm right, yeah.
That game.
So, it is quite obvious that all these Gaming journalism websites are corrupt.
And all these feminists, the SJWs, and all these people defend this.
So that's why I was so interested in GamerGate even before... You know, I used to be a gamer, like, in the, like, 80s and 90s, and now, like, I love the culture around video games, but I don't play that much, but I thought...
The whole thing was fascinating because you guys were dealing with so much of the stuff that we talk about now.
The gamers were dealing with all the social justice warrior stuff.
All the collusion between, you know, creators and the publishers and all of that and feminism and all of this stuff.
And that sort of seeped up into society, which is a good thing.
Transition for you also want to talk about cultural Marxism, and I think that's very much related So how is cultural Marxism the ideas of it taking root in Greece right now?
Due to the fact that we have parties like Syriza and to an extent other parties like And Arsia, which is not in the parliament right now, they get like 1% of the vote or something.
And they are radicals.
And there was also PASOK, also known as the Socialists, which was responsible for the crisis that we live in right now.
They were promising to the people things that on the surface are needed, like high wages, high pensions, benefits and all that good stuff.
But what they do, what they did, let's say during the 80s, they tripled the wages.
So that's fine, but they did it while not acknowledging that in order to do that, you have to take some countermeasures.
As well, like you have to decrease taxation for the company so that they can pay their employees.
They didn't do that.
And as a result, a lot of industries that we had back then, like we used to create buses, for example, we had a car industry, small but still relevant at the time.
And as a result, they all closed down.
And the situation was getting worse and worse until now that we happened to be in the EU.
And despite the things that were being told by the media that, oh my God, the EU is our home and if we leave, we'll turn into North Korea.
It's fucking laughable.
How am I supposed to take you seriously after saying this?
So basically... All the problems that we have have pretty much We have gone plus ten, right?
At the moment we joined the EU and the Eurozone in 2001, I think.
All right, so for people that don't know you, you're the only person we selected out of the 20 people that I actually do know of, because I follow you on Twitter, and you are a YouTuber by the name of The Last Pharaoh, and you do really some great videos talking about atheism and secularism and being an ex-Muslim and the regressive left, all of this stuff.
But before we get into that, tell me, you're 31 in Egypt, how is life in Egypt these days?
Well, it's kind of okay, I mean, by... Look, when people ask me that question, I always like to think, like, to give myself some hope, to say at least I'm not living in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or something.
And actually, like, On a day to day basis, I really don't feel like that much of, you know, it's just like for other people, other people are getting it like bad.
But for me, maybe because I just have like thick skin or something.
So, we don't have to go too much into the politics, because I want to really focus on what you're doing.
But, you know, it was only, what, three, four years ago that the Arab Spring happened, and you guys lived under Mubarak, who was basically a military dictator for 30-something years.
Then you had the Muslim Brotherhood, by democratic elections for a year.
Then they get overthrown by the military again, and that's where you're at now.
Well, you have to, like, differentiate between, like, two, like, classes of people, so you have, like, the majority of Egyptians, like, the normal, everyday, like, kind of people.
I would say they're, like, I don't know, they're not happy right now, as they should, but they're, like, kind of okay with it, like, with the current, like, government.
They were not happy during the Muslim Brotherhood, even less happy than they were under Mubarak, so that was, like, that was not gonna work at all, the whole thing.
So, but the political class in Egypt, which I happen to think that like 90% of them are idiots, but yeah, they're not happy with anything.
Which I think is like, they have like this like kind of like regressive SJW kind of a thing happening like all the time and they're not focusing on what's important.
So they just make big deals about nothing while not talking about really people going to jail for just saying Like normal, like just stupid shit.
People say, people are going to jail for making jokes about filling like balloon condoms with air and handing them out so they just send them to prison.
Some people just went to prison because they do like sketch comedy on YouTube or something, they sent them to prison.
So I think the most important thing that needs to change in Egypt, not the regime, not the economy, Economy and everything, they're just doing what they can.
I mean the government.
They have an interest to just do as best as they can.
But even if I was living in America or something, I would still do the videos anonymously.
People seem to miss that point.
I said that all the time.
I'm not hiding.
I just don't like putting my face on camera.
I just don't like seeing myself on camera.
So that's it.
And to me, it's like, I don't know.
It's like I'm tired.
I'm like 31, but I feel like I'm 60.
I'm tired.
I'm not gonna hide.
I'm not gonna censor myself anymore.
People seem to forget that on a day-to-day basis, I have to pretend to be someone else to everyone around me.
Even when I'm getting a haircut, I have to agree with the guy who's cutting my hair that The weather, we have like a particularly hot summer these days, that the weather is like Allah's thing, and you know, we have to be thankful because some people got it worse.
So I have to agree with that, like every single minute of every single day.
So I'm not gonna censor myself online, that's like, not gonna happen.
I think it was like about three years ago I had some like you know like I had like a major event happened in my life so I had to stop because I was just going and I wasn't like really paying attention but I never really was a Muslim if you really like Considering, like, how I was living, I never really was.
I just didn't even stop to think, you know what, maybe this is all bullshit.
I never stopped to say that to myself.
But when my life just stopped me, like forcefully stopped, I had some time to, like, reflect and think and just reach a conclusion that was just, like, right there, but I never really even considered it.
All right, so we only have like another minute, but I'll do something else with you in the future, but just talk to me a little bit about the regressives, because you hate them as much as I do, this regressive ideology.
So how does it affect you as a free thinker and a secularist and an atheist in Egypt?
How does their ideology harm your ability to live the way you want?
Well, they're basically shutting down any conversation that could lead to anything.
Because when you're talking about like that, yeah, that there's no such thing that like that Islam is just like any other religion and like that, they're ignoring Like the majority of Muslims that live outside of the US, the United States or the UK or whatever, that really are living in horrible conditions.
Don't look at me, I'm living fantastically compared to other people, even in Egypt.
No one bothers me, I do whatever I want, but some people can't.
And when you start saying things like that's racist to just say that we should keep an eye on some issues that are very important and you should like...
You're liberal.
That's the problem, too.
You should, you know, you should actually leave everything and just focus on that there are people getting murdered for being gay or for saying the wrong thing or for listening to the wrong kind of music.
You should do that.
You should champion that cause, not just for people living outside the U.S., just live inside the U.S.
and don't want to travel because, you know, the Internet and all that.
And don't even get me started on this nonsense about feminism and Islam.
So, I have just basically taken this concept, being a skeptic, now I'm taking it to the next level and I'm saying, okay, here I am, I'm a skeptic, I may not agree with some views of Hinduism, I may not agree with a lot of views of Islam or Christianity, but where mutual respect comes in is, I don't need to tolerate you, I need to respect you and you need to give me that respect back in return.
That's when you have a dialogue.
Tolerance is, you're saying, you suck, but it's okay, I'll let you be.
So does that make the state of atheists in India much stronger, actually?
Because I did get a... I would say probably half of the people that emailed us from India said they were atheists, and didn't make it sound like they were hiding, per se.
Obviously, you're doing this right now.
So if Hinduism, which is 80% of the religion in India, is sort of tolerant of atheism, that's pretty fantastic, right?
I mean, I personally like the theory of karma as an action and reaction.
I think karma could be taken as an action and reaction.
But then, there is this new atheism in India.
I call them the Marxist atheists.
So basically you have to understand, the political scenario in India and especially the media, you have the social sciences and the humanities departments, they keep churning out these Marxist atheists.
So when you got a lot of emails, I won't be surprised that you must have gotten a lot of emails of those Marxist atheists who will paint a very different picture about Hinduism to you.
And then I have the third category, which is the wannabe atheist.
So that person has not read anything.
So they just probably saw a video of Richard Dawkins on YouTube.
So they must have gone, okay, I like this.
It's like that.
So I have three categorizations of atheism in India.
And it's actually kind of freeing because you, as the person that identifies however you want to identify, you're making the point of saying, well, sometimes these labels are a little confusing or don't quite get it right or all that.
And meanwhile, society is just obsessed with these labels, right?
Yeah, I have been doing this for close to nine years now.
The thing with the internet is that you don't really know who is typing what.
For the most part, a lot of the trans stuff that comes out and people doing that, it's probably people just trying on a persona or trying on an identity or something like that.
Usually teenagers.
And I think that we kind of take them a little bit more seriously than we should on a national hysteria-type level.
But I don't necessarily see that there's much wrong with it, but it just...
Let it be what it is, instead of making a big deal out of it if it's online.
In-person stuff, real tangible happenings, that gets a little bit more attention, or should.
But whenever it's people online typing or posting or whatever, it's like...
So for someone that's watching this right now, wherever they are in the world, that has never heard from a trans person or the only trans person that they know of is Caitlyn Jenner, can you just tell me a little bit about growing up, when did you realize you were trans, etc.? ?
Yeah, this is always very difficult because everybody's going to have like a similar overarching narrative, but it's going to have its different details.
I knew something was off as a child, which is one of those common narratives, but I grew up Southern Baptist and being raised that way is very kind of closed off.
Everybody that wasn't Southern Baptist was influenced by the devil.
But we moved around a lot and all that sort of thing.
And just, I don't know how to qualify myself.
We are kind of the only people it seems nowadays where you have to explain yourself, rationalize to me why I should accept that you are who you say you are.
So it's one of those deals where it's like, I wish I could give a definitive answer.
Like, this is exactly how I know.
I can point to these scientific studies.
This is exactly what happened.
I can't.
We don't, we're not there yet.
What I can point to is that trans people have existed throughout history in multiple cultures.
This is not a new thing.
It is only new to the American West.
And what I mean by that is the modern American West.
Native tribes had different allowances for different genders and gender roles.
So it's only new to, you know, the North American West.
And I think that kind of goes back to like Puritan European influence and whatnot kind of scrounging.
All deviancy away from the possibility of human experience.
And I'm sure that there were people back then, you know, white European colonials or whatever, that were also trans but could not say anything for risk of being hung or killed or whatever.
I think a lot of trans people go through very similar phases in their transition.
When I first started, I was a helper.
I was going to be there for my trans sisters who were just starting also.
I spent a lot of nights sleepless trying to keep people from killing themselves.
But also trying to educate and explain and all this sort of thing.
And as time went on and I got more passing privilege, as we call it, I didn't have as many people stopping me and asking me.
And I kind of developed sort of a passive routine of like, this is how I'm just going to interact with people and just be super kind, super sweet and all that sort of thing.
And there's that pressure.
That you always have to be on your A-game as a trans woman around the normal people or whatever, right?
And there's two camps on this.
There's the radical queers who are like, we should not be trying to fit in.
We are unique in our own way and it's beautiful and all this sort of thing.
And then there's the people who are like, well, no, I kind of just want to fit in, you know?
It's difficult trying to navigate this because it's very politicized.
If you choose one side or the other, or you try to not pick a side, nobody's gonna like you and you end up in your room all alone all the time.
Well, is that one of the hardest things about sort of being, not only being a minority in this regard, but like, as I said, trans issues seem to be the minority of the moment, as you referenced before this issue with the bathrooms and North Carolina.
Everything trans is, you know, makes drudge and it makes all the news.
So do you feel that you're under a microscope, even in just your private life, with everything that you do?
The process and everything, I'm just like, this is blowing my mind.
That's more of a specific issue.
The trans experience is hugely diverse, as diverse as the queer experience.
And again, who do you define as trans?
If you go with the Tumblr versions or whatnot, if you cross-dress on Halloween for a Rocky Horror Picture Show, you qualify as trans now.
Congratulations!
And you can't really say, well, no, you don't qualify if you're in that community because suddenly you're removing somebody's identity and you're going to get in trouble for that and all that sort of thing.
So I'm just kind of like, I need to accept the concept of qualia.
I don't know if you're familiar with that, but... No.
Yeah, qualia is a term, I'm kind of like, I think so much that I'm an armchair philosopher, but qualia was a word that was coined that was to describe the specific experience that we each have.
So whenever you look at like a blue wall, you will have a certain range of emotions and feelings and all that.
And I will have a supposedly different one.
And that is qualia.
So we can relate that we're looking at a blue wall, but Whatever's invoked inside of us is going to be different.
So that's kind of like the trans experience, and that's the best I can do when it comes to rationalizing.
You know, it's like, I just know what I feel, and I'm sorry that you can't relate.
And again, with the bathroom issue, oh my gosh.
Well, listen, I appreciate... Oh, go ahead.
Well, I mean, like, I appreciate people trying to relate to the trans issues, and like, and whenever they think of the bathroom thing, they're like, Why would I go to the bathroom?
Or why do I think people would go to the bathroom first thing that comes to mind?
Well, sexual assault or something, right?
And I'm like, well, you should not get in a dress and go into the bathroom then.
Actually there is one other thing that I wanted to talk about that you mentioned in your submission that I thought was really interesting.
You brought up a phrase that I hadn't heard before called constructed illusion and you related this to having a male and female voice and when you may use each one.
So I have developed this voice with years of training.
It's still my voice, it's just exercised, right?
My arms aren't exercised, but it makes sense.
So I have a wider range.
So with this voice, I get treated different whenever I interact with people because I'm not threatening with this voice.
But, if you're ready for this, if I drop my voice, I suddenly become a threat.
Right?
So I can switch between these two, but that was the voice that's affected by testosterone.
And anybody who heard that I am immediately a different person.
There's no going back, right?
The illusion is broken.
But how do they know that's just not another one of my developed voices?
And this is kind of why I call it constructed illusion, because it's related to magic tricks, performance magic.
You do misdirection, all that sort of thing.
And it is a performance, in a sense.
But in another sense, it is me.
It's really hard to really unpack that in a short amount of time.
But it's inner subjectivity.
With my voice, it was for me at first.
But eventually I kind of start feeling trapped by it, because even though I've exercised this voice, I'm still not capable of a full range of emotional expression using it, if that makes sense.
So you are in Brussels, but originally from Cyprus.
So we're going to get to Cyprus in a minute because nobody talks about Cyprus, but it's a really interesting, tiny little country that very few people know about.
But you're in Brussels.
Now, obviously, the last few months in Belgium, but especially in Brussels, have been very tough.
Well, yeah, I have to say it hasn't affected people on a conscious level.
I mean, you see people going about their daily routine, but it's definitely had a very malicious sort of subconscious undertone, particularly since the Paris attacks.
We've had Martial law on and off.
And it's very concerning when you see four armed soldiers outside McDonald's and an armoured car outside your workplace.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's been very strange.
And the attacks actually happened at a metro station that I used quite frequently.
So when you see these changes, you see more soldiers out there, you see more security and all that kind of stuff, how does that just change your general psyche?
Like, that you're walking to work and you're seeing this stuff.
So there were a lot of reports after the attacks in Brussels that in parts of the community that one of the attackers was from, and I guess they found him a couple weeks later, that the community there was knowingly hiding him.
Were people talking about that in Belgium?
It sort of trickled its way into Western media, but not really, and then it was kind of hard to tell what was actually true.
Well I don't think this is just a problem that's isolated to Belgium.
I think in general we don't see members of the local community where many of these suspects are from turning them in or making a concerted enough effort with the authorities.
And it is something that we have to try and deal with through better integration policies.
I mean, you have different communities that live parallel lives, which, I mean, they exist occasionally in the physical space, because, I mean, the physical space is overlapped slightly, but they just live in a different reality.
So how much of that, where do you place all the blame on that?
Because this is one of the things that a lot of people emailed us about was this idea, especially people in Europe were saying that a lot of the Muslim communities aren't integrating properly and some people were sort of blaming their own government, some people were blaming the Muslim communities.
My guess is that the truth is somewhere in between.
Well, I like to go from more abstractly and say that the problem has been that because of our social justice approach, or rather regressive approach, we've been giving rights to communities rather than to individuals.
And it's very arbitrary to define a community in a certain way.
And, you know, because the premise of our individualist kind of rule of law has been that rights should be given to individuals and not to You know, what social justice people, however social justice people decide to classify people as.
Yeah, so how much of those ideas, clearly you're speaking my language, it's about the individual not the group, let's get away from the suppression Olympics thing, all of that stuff which we've talked about so much here, how much of that ideology has taken hold in Belgium?
Because in the British school system, what you have is you have a third of schools which are regarded as, which are faith schools, they receive public money because they haven't designated a religious character.
and uh... what we see here is that uh... i'd i'd believe that the child's rights
uh... being infringed upon
because uh... basically because that the child is classified as as as
belonging to a particular community uh... they get labeled
uh... by very arbitrary criteria uh... and uh...
and attend uh... faithful
uh...
fulfill uh... the aims of social justice and i think that this is
it's it's a bizarrely backwards thing that we do in the west
I mean, we do this in America with several religions, where the government funds sort of faith-based schools, even though we're a totally secular society.
So you might learn about many secular subjects, but then, and about other religions and secularism and how to behave in a civic society, but if you also learn that the penalty for apostasy is death, and that the law of God in the Sharia is above Yeah, I mean, to me, that gets to the heart of the social justice stuff because it seeps into the education system, then you have a government that is subsidizing basically religious teaching.
I'll give you the recent history that's most significant now.
Yeah.
Well, in 1974, the Turkish army occupied half of Cyprus.
And the island has been divided since then.
The Turkish state installed a kind of fake republic that's only recognized by Turkey and Pakistan.
And there have been ongoing attempts to resolve the situation over the decades.
I feel that I'm not very optimistic about the two sides coming to a settlement because of the physical power that Turkey is exerting.
I think whether Turkey withdraws or not is mainly a subject of the trajectory of Turkish foreign policy and whether it's in Turkey's interest to leave.
And my hope is that because Turkish foreign policy has become increasingly Islamified and that it's shifting away from the foreign policy of the West, There's a growing relationship between Cyprus and Israel, and my hope is that the West eventually aligns its foreign policy closer to secularist entities throughout the region, like the Kurds, for example, also.
And my hope is that that will lead to a better, will give Cyprus leverage in negotiations
because it will have the more backing from the West.
Now, first off, before we get into any of the issues you emailed me about, is it true that Canada is going to build a wall to keep Americans out regardless of who wins our presidential election?
Okay, so you sent me some really interesting stuff that sort of touched on some of the things that we talk about on the show, but then you really went in another direction with it, which is why I wanted to have you on.
So one of the things you mentioned is that sort of the mental health anti-stigma The campaigns that we see these days are actually part of the regressive left ideology.
Now, I gave a lot of buzzwords there, so can you unpack that for me a little bit?
Yeah, so you're sort of talking about two things there.
So on one hand, there's the feeling if the economy is not good or their family life isn't good or whatever else it is, sort of a reality in their life versus these campaigns that in a weird way, because of this oppression Olympics that we've talked about, kind of make it cool to say, Well, this is wrong with me, or this is wrong with me, or I have this, or this, or that, correct?
unidentified
Yeah, there seems to be a bit of a hierarchy, like, it's more cool to be, like, bipolar than to be depressed, and they seem to be saying, accept me because I'm not like you, whereas we all know, like, the way towards acceptance is to be, well, we're all human, we're all the same, but They're really going for, no, because I'm different and it's not my fault.
Yeah.
So sort of, for people who don't have an illness, what does that mean if they're struggling that they shouldn't be accepted?
So someone who doesn't have any known condition, so to speak, in a weird way, then it feels worse for them because they're supposed to feel okay, right?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
And there's a lot of research showing that the more we sort of give people this information about these illnesses, the more we create them in people.
Because it's very much cultural, but they just have to get a brain scan and people pay attention because they think that's science.
Yeah, do you guys have all the crazy commercials that we have in the States?
You know, you turn on the TV, especially any of the cable news shows, and all the commercials are for one depression medicine or another, and you know, there's a cartoon cloud following somebody, and take this medication with this medication, and it makes everybody think that they're depressed or somehow defective.
unidentified
Yeah, I don't watch TV, but I'm sure we do have those.
But then he put another group of rats in like a bigger container where they could socialize and they could play and they had lots of room and those rats wouldn't drink the morphine water.
Even when they had already forced them into physical dependency.
So, that to me is evidence against this whole crazy notion that we should be fighting drugs.
Canada isn't probably in the same state as America, but we are certainly getting there.
Well, listen, it's fascinating to me because you took sort of a theme related to, you know, political correctness and this oppression stuff and all that, and applied it to something that we haven't talked about that much.
So basically, for people that don't know, he's the guy that runs the Biblical Park somewhere in America, and he debated Bill Nye about evolution versus creation.
I told my brother and he was a little bit more into that.
He showed me Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
I thought it would be a good English lesson to read those books like God is not Great.
I was talking to some people there because I had connections to Everywhere in the world, because I had some people from Chile there, from Switzerland, from Belgium, from everywhere.
So what astounded me the most was this guy from Switzerland, actually, who was like, well, I believe in creationism.
And it was a Swiss guy like me, who was thinking that Noah's Ark really happened.
It was just mind-blowing for me.
So I started to watch debates on YouTube and stuff.
And yeah, when I came home, I was like a full-blown atheist.
And it sounds to me that you deal with exactly what most atheists deal with, which is that it's not actually that big of a deal, but you feel like you have to sort of say it because otherwise the world just thinks you believe something that you don't.
Yeah well it's funny because I always say it's like to me I don't care what you believe as long as you're not trying to chop my head off for making me believe anything else then you go ahead and believe whatever you want you know.
Alright so one of the things that you wrote in that you want to talk about that I thought was really interesting was that you want to talk about the difference between the US Constitution and the Swiss Constitution and that basically you think that we're, don't worry about the hair, that we That we are sort of obsessed with never changing our constitution, but you guys actually change your constitution pretty frequently, right?
It was like, I heard this whole debate about gun regulation and the Second Amendment of the United States, and I thought to myself, like, why wouldn't they allow to change that?
I live beside all this lobbying and stuff from the NRA.
But I have read a Gallup poll that like 55% of American people are for more strict gun regulation.
And I looked into it a little bit more and what I found was pretty astonishing to me.
I've always thought like The American Constitution is kind of static and just for 230 years it was almost the same.
And the Swiss Constitution, as you may know, we have referendums like four times a year where people just send in some ideas and we vote on it.
And this is like changing the constitution every time.
Yeah, so alright, so have you seen any... give me like one good example of that, like something that you guys have changed for the better, and one time that maybe it didn't work, if you can think of something.
So the other thing that you wanted to talk about, which is one of the things that almost everyone in Europe especially has wanted to talk to me about, is the refugee situation and political correctness.
You cannot talk properly about what the issue is with the refugees that come in.
I mean, I'm all for letting them in, but we have to talk about the issues that are coming to us with this.
Yeah, they're just saying that no, there are no problems at all coming with this, or maybe a little bit financial, but nothing really cultural or religious.
So, you know, I've mentioned a lot about Sweden and just recently I had Tino Sanandaji on the show, who is an economist from Sweden and one of the few people that will talk about the political correct situation and sort of this regressive ideology that seems to have taken hold in Sweden.
And I got a lot of messages from Sweden talking about that.
And that works essentially in that we have a formal democracy, but on the behest of the cultural force that our government represents, we have an enforced dictatorship of a sort in the form of the cultural hegemon in Sweden that, you know, has its expression in the opinion corridor.
Right, so what you're talking about basically is, as we've used this phrase, the Oppression Olympics, you guys are really big on this, that depending on who you are and where you're from and your religion and your skin color, we really put you in this pecking order, right?
And you're basically, you were very much a homogenous society, and now that's really changing, so the pecking order starts getting even... Yeah, we were a very homogenous society up until at least the 90s.
That's when the Balkan Wars erupted and we had the genocide and everything like that, and we got a lot of refugees from that.
They've integrated mostly well.
We didn't really get the problems until we had the very large immigration from the Middle East.
It's easier to integrate a European culture than a completely foreign culture from an entire different part of the world with a different cultural context and all of that.
Yeah, it's a new phenomenon because in Sweden the left has essentially ruled since post-World War II.
For 60 years we had one party dominant in our, what's it called, Parliament.
For 60 years we had the Social Democrats completely dominant in the Parliament.
Only one interruption for four years.
And that's kind of, when I look back, I'm a student of history so I can see the negative side of it, it's absolutely insane to see it just have one party.
They did achieve some pretty good things, the things we call Folkemet in Sweden, our welfare state, they did achieve that, but they also dismantled it.
But the right has risen because we can't speak about these things, and they are the only ones that have the balls to speak about it, because, well, the extreme part were already Nazis, The less extreme part didn't really care to be compared, that they were compared with the Nazis, so they just talked about it.
And now the only way to talk about this is to dedicate yourself to being on the far right, essentially.
Yeah, so we see this happening in America right now, and that's why I've been talking about it, because I see all of you guys, not just in Sweden, but all over Europe, I see this happening, and I'm trying to help that not happen here.
So what does that do for a person like you?
A person that is not a Nazi and is not a racist, and yet you see a problem with society and only one group talking about it.
Because the left, well, they think I'm the great Satan.
The right, well, I'm also the great Satan for them, because, well, you know, I kind of think that brown people are people too, and judge them like people, and that's not right, according to the far right.
I mean, I consider myself ideologically independent, because I consider ideologies to be secular religions.
So I shy away from those things.
So it's very hard being of my camp in Sweden, which is, you know, liberal, essentially.
So 1964, you're working on the very beginnings of digital computers, and you said all zeros and ones.
Did you ever, do you remember ever having the glimpse of what that could become?
Did you ever think you could be walking around with this thing in your pocket that would be exponentially more powerful than everything you were working on at the moment?
Well, you know, there was a book called Future Shock, you're probably familiar with, years ago, in which Alvin Toffler predicted that progress would be so fast that by the time you began to get a little bit comfortable, the next thing would come along, and you'd be a little bit in shock, and you'd deal with that, the next thing would come, the next thing would come.
Well, I think that's pretty much where we're at right now.
It does seem like that, that the second we get okay with a little bit of the technology, or just another app comes out, the second you're okay with one and now this one does something else and you forget that, it's really, it's fascinating.
It is, and what I find kind of disheartening is a lot of people, one of the things I do here is I'm on the library board and I help some of the older retirees here try to deal with their iPads and their iPhones and God help them, their Windows computers, etc.
But you know, I think a lot of the older people are now understanding that this is actually a device that can be used for things like we're doing here and for making contact with other people and spreading ideas and getting your ideas out.
So as they become easier to use, In a human sense, people are going to look past the technology now.
I have a neighbor who's, she's 20 years older than me, right, so she's 93 years old.
I remember, I was thinking about that, and I remember when I was probably five or six, we were living with my grandmother, going to church, Sunday mornings, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Methodist Church, a little North Texas town, sitting at Sunday school, looking out the window at the tree and the swing, and so I'm thinking, God, I'd rather be any place but here.
I think probably realistically about the time I figured out Santa wasn't real, I had the same kind of questions about the stories I'd been taught.
Yeah, so one of the other things you mentioned is that you're sort of fascinated by how Christians and just religious people in general are often deceived by their sources.
So it's not even necessarily the source itself, right?
It's not necessarily the book itself, but it's sort of the messengers that are the deceivers.
You know, if you look at Abrahamic religions today, they don't have what we consider to be basic hardcore evidence for their claims.
The only thing they have for a source are books that stem out of oral traditions, that stem out of ancient manuscripts that have been copied and recopied and copied and changed and different.
So I think there's a problem because the people who are their pastors and who are their priests and go to divinity school.
They understand the history of their religion.
They know the questions involved.
They know the contradictions.
They know that a lot of this is really false.
But they don't tell that to their congregations.
So the people who hear this really have no independent way of judging whether this is real or not.
So if I have a book, somebody's giving me a book and says, look, this is reality.
I have some questions.
Well, where did it come from?
What does it say?
How do we know what it says is true, etc.?
So digging back into those sources and being able to come up with what we think are historically realistic stories about all this helps people to be a little bit more critical and judge the things that they just take on faith.
Yeah, so one of the things when I've talked to other atheists and when I talk about atheism in general, one of the questions I get is people say, well how do you have a moral center then?
How are you able to have a code that you live by without religion?
I think your laugh already sort of gave away your answer, but tell me, what have you based your moral center on?
You can send people, I have a book, it's already, I self-published it, it's out on Amazon, The Q Fragments, and it's about the, it's about basically what we've been talking about.
I podcast it, every chapter is a podcast that I read.
So I just like people to read it.
Enjoy the tale, and think about the message that underlies this, right?
That all of these myths and everything may have come from some particular historical actors and people, but they're not necessarily what people are trying to get us to believe today.
So are the churches, I mean, are they losing their power quickly?
How much power do they actually hold over politics these days?
unidentified
Very little.
They're kind of Auxiliary, I guess.
I mean, like, you don't get too many people going to mass, and they don't take too much of it seriously, and most of Ireland is very, you know, with regards to, say, homosexuality or whatever, we're generally, as a country, we're generally quite alright with it.
We're quite a, we're a country basically, like, as long as you don't annoy me, I don't really care what you do.
I think I just really wanted to... I don't know, maybe it was probably the advertising on television with, you know, just starving African children and stuff, and you wanted to be like, oh, I'd love to help someone like that, and it just kind of grew and grew.
I was very interested in wars and I did a module last semester which was Ethnic Conflict which was fantastic and I'd love to do a Masters in Ethnic Conflict, a Masters in Ethnic Conflict.
So I'd love to work in the United Nations, something like that and a conflict resolution.
My whole undergraduate actually just began, so I'll be done on Saturday.
So one of the things that you wanted to talk to me about is one of the things that pretty much everybody wanted to talk about, which is political correctness and how it's seeping into society.
So what's going on on that front in Ireland?
unidentified
I think a lot of the stuff you see in I think ideas of racism and stuff are important from America.
We all think, oh we have problems with racism.
America is a very specific problem with racism.
You know what I mean?
And we think, oh my god, you're racist towards black people and that.
We never had that problem.
Because, you know, we've only been in our own country for 94 years or something like that.
25 years, sorry.
Well, you'll get people, it's generally hard left people, people on the socialist spectrum.
I'm not saying, you don't have to be a socialist, obviously, to be, you know, ridiculously, you know, as Maajid Nawaz is saying, you know, regressive left and all.
I can't vouch for everything that's going on here.
I'm wondering about some of it myself.
Don't worry.
unidentified
I think we're okay.
But I mean, when it comes to terrorist attacks and criticizing Islam, you do get some pretty, well, not Islam, sorry, the use of Islam in a violent way, use of anything in a violent way.
I mentioned that in a class and I got some pretty funny looks.
I mean, that's been one of the through lines here because we're just talking about ideas and you mention an idea and you get some funny looks in class.
unidentified
Yeah, but no one is shouting me down claiming a safe space, which is progress, I think.
Yeah, and that's one of the things that you had written in that you wanted to talk about, a little bit about academia and the difference between America and Japan.
All right, so it's just essentially been really refreshing being here, because a lot of the more annoying aspects of American academia are not present here.
I know, but compared to the issues with America right now, I could deal with them way more because that's essentially just me saying, why do I have to respect the teacher all the time?
I'm American.
I don't respect people.
So that's really the main issue.
But like information being presented here just so straightforwardly really does seem to help like Nip the ideological issues in the bud there, because that's not something teachers are supposed to be doing.
So one of the things that you had written in that you wanted to talk about that I thought was really interesting was about content creators being unfairly criticized.
And I think what you were referring to is generally just sort of these YouTubers that put their thoughts out there that end up getting trolled endlessly.
And then there's the broader sense of content creation, where it's like, there are people who are writing books or making comics, or movies that are being endlessly criticized with a very ideological bent at this point, to the point where not meeting certain very leftist standards is considered a drawback and a fault, when it probably shouldn't inherently be.
So it's like, It's not like I am mad when women show up in comic books, but I don't think it's all that fair when you get comic books pulled because they don't have women in them.
There was the controversy many years ago now, because I'm old, with the Joker comic book cover, where the Joker was abusing Batgirl because the Joker is the Joker.
But they had that comic book cover pulled and the artist essentially blacklisted because they said it encouraged violence against women.
Yeah, I mean, I find that totally fascinating that people seem incapable, a certain amount of people are incapable of separating the artist, the creator, George Lucas, who draws, you know, comes up with the idea of Jabba.
And then he had a slave and he put her in a sexy outfit.
And people think that's him imposing his view on what he thinks women should be.