411. You Are Already Living in 1984 | Laurence Fox

[0] Hello, everybody.

[1] I have the privilege to speaking today with actor Lawrence Fox.

[2] We start by talking about his recent legal trouble in the UK.

[3] Lawrence was arrested recently because of his stated support for the activists.

[4] in the UK who are interfering with the imposition of the closed -circuit television cameras designed to monitor everyone's movement under the purported guise of anti -pollution and saving the planet.

[5] There's a lot of CCTV cameras in England monitoring people to a much greater degree than I think is justifiable in a free state.

[6] society, and Lawrence took a stance against that and has paid a legal price for doing so.

[7] He's also suffered substantial disruption of his acting career as a consequence of his political stance, which has been pilloried by people on the left as fascist as anything that's liberal or even moderately, let's see, moderately conservative or even liberal tends to be these days.

[8] And so we talk about, well, we talk about his legal trouble.

[9] We talk about his ability to act out dark characters and what that means psychologically and practically.

[10] We talk about the relationship between freedom of speech and the propagation of truth through psyche and society, pointing in no small part to the fact that there's a real valuable freedom that comes along with just saying what you think, you know, carefully and clearly.

[11] The cost of that, especially in ideologically adult times, can be the savaging of reputation and the price you might pay in terms of career development, but the advantage is the freedom of conscience and the ability to live in truth that comes along with actually saying what you believe to be true.

[12] So, we're going to wander through all that territory.

[13] Welcome aboard.

[14] So, Lawrence, I thought we'd start right at the heart of the matter, or one of the many black hearts of the matter, you might say.

[15] I've been following your recent persecution, I would say, by the legal establishment in the UK.

[16] I came across this, what was happening to you, of course, because of Twitter.

[17] Primarily, I've been following you for a long time on Twitter.

[18] And I've also been watching with mounting apprehension the operation of the progressives in London.

[19] It looks to me like Sadiq Khan and his London administration are at the forefront of the C40 consortium, implementation of the C40 consortium plans.

[20] And I've reviewed them.

[21] They put them out in stark black and white and they include propositions like the elimination of 95 % of all forms of private transportation over the next 10 years, something like that.

[22] So there won't be any cars, which is why we're all being enjoined, let's say, to buy the electric cars for which we have an insufficient supply of electricity.

[23] Let's say that we're going to be required to buy something like three articles of clothing a year, to have one short haul flight per person every three years, which of course would devastate the entire tourism industry that basically keeps much of Europe afloat, to stop eating meat, et cetera, et cetera.

[24] And one of the steps in that direction seems to be the establishment of these ultra -low emissions zones, which are there, as far as I'm concerned, not in the least to help the goddamn planet, but to stop people from, what would you say, to stop to discourage people in the patterns of consumption that the progressives regard as planet demolishing.

[25] And now, I know there's been a big protest emerge in London, in particular, with regards to the cameras that the power -mongering globalist utopians have decided to employ every which way to keep an eye on every bloody thing that everyone does, and that these Blade Runner types, so -called Blade Runner types, have been demolishing these cameras.

[26] And you have tweeted out your support for that.

[27] And I've retweeted that and indicated my support as well in a relatively tongue -in -cheek manner, but still directly, you got arrested.

[28] I went to the UK a month ago.

[29] They left me alone, which, you know, I suppose doesn't surprise me in some ways, but also indicates the arbitrary, what would you call the arbitrary enforcement of these absolutely preposterous laws.

[30] So do you want to fill people in to the degree that you can, given your bail conditions, about exactly what's been going on with you and what your view of this is?

[31] Sure.

[32] So these, I'm not allowed to say the word that you just said, but I can say that Blade Runner is my favorite film.

[33] But I'm not allowed to say the plural of that word, and I'm not allowed to say the name of these devices that are used to surveil Londoners.

[34] You can admit to the existence of the plural, I presume.

[35] I can admit to the existence.

[36] of the plural, but who knows?

[37] The door's not too far away.

[38] They might be barging at any time.

[39] This is a scheme dreamed up, as you said, by the progressive planet haters who want to drag us all back into the Stone Age.

[40] And the thing that bothered me most about it, and probably one of the only reasons I got involved in politics in the first place, was because it was a scheme designed to damage the poorest in society the most.

[41] So I don't know if you have this expression in Canada, but the expression in London is the white van man. He's the guy that gets out in his white van every day, and he drives into London, he does whatever he does, plumbing, electrician, anything like that.

[42] He is driving a diesel van, and Sadiq Khan and his gang of globalist scumbags have decided that any diesel vehicle made after 2015 or 2016, I can't remember the exact year, is now liable for a £12 .50 a day surcharge.

[43] Now, and this is in direct conflict with the fact that if you buy an electric vehicle with your corporation tax in the United Kingdom as a well -off person, you can claim back 100 % of the cost of that electric vehicle in the first year of your tax year.

[44] So essentially what he's doing is he's deliberately making the poorest people poorer and those with the least voice quietest.

[45] And I took great exception to this.

[46] No one voted for this.

[47] There's actually, he suppressed his own report saying that this would have a negligible effect on the pollution in London.

[48] And he had that report suppressed.

[49] So to me, it was criminal behavior and it's extortion.

[50] And it's all the things that you associate with criminals, as far as I'm concerned.

[51] So I supported in the spirit of, you know, American Westerns the idea of people taking their town back.

[52] and for doing so for tweeting my support of it relentlessly and then for saying that I'd like to join them because, well I also can't admit whether I know them or not but Sadiq sent six of his finest coppers to come and arrest me two and a half months ago and what the thing that was so profoundly moving about that experience was on the car journey on the way back with the six coppers, there was a report of a suicide and a stabbing.

[53] And both of the times, the officers in the car said, we're busy dealing with other matters.

[54] So I just, you know, London has been completely hijacked by this mankind -hating, regressive nihilist.

[55] So let me, I'm going to play devil's advocate here a fair bit.

[56] These are questions I torture myself with.

[57] going to make a case for Sadiq Khan's, his actions.

[58] So the first case would be, well, London is overcrowded, and there is expense associated with the traffic congestion, right, the time that people spend because traffic is congested.

[59] And you could imagine a scheme whereby there was a fee implemented to dissuade unnecessary Now, this is where it gets tricky, because who decides what's unnecessary, but to dissuade, let's say, delayable transportation into London, right?

[60] Because it would keep the roads, in principle, it might keep the roads more free.

[61] And that would actually, if people could move around more quickly, there would be some economic advantage to that.

[62] So what do you think, do you think there's any, that any credit whatsoever should be given to an argument like that?

[63] I mean, so it could, Because Kahn could say, well, we're just trying to control traffic, and it is too congested.

[64] Now, I know he's made these cases that, you know, London Air is still polluted, and I find that pretty appalling, because if you look at the historical record of particulates and dangerous gases in London Air, the improvement in air quality, especially over the last, what, five decades, has been absolutely precipitous.

[65] And it's actually a miracle of modern technology that London Air is as clean as it is.

[66] And you can say that for most cities, even places like L .A., which like London, were famous for their pollution.

[67] So that just strikes me as preposterous.

[68] But can you see any justification whatsoever for attempting to implement control over congestion in London?

[69] Well, we already previously had control over congestion in London, which was called the congestion charge, which everybody has to pay anyway if you drive a vehicle in or out of London, albeit not an electric vehicle.

[70] So, and you're right to say that pollution has come down drastically in London, all meter readings, pollution meter reading, particulate meetings, carbon readings are very, very, either low or moderate in London.

[71] So there's no justification to add this extra tax other than to fill up his emptying coffers.

[72] Now, there is a broader argument to be had about how much we want the planet to be a cleaner and better place.

[73] I think you'd find it hard push to find someone who go, no, I just want the planet to be much more dirty.

[74] But we've seen with, also, sorry, just to interrupt about the congestion thing, the 50 % of London social housing is occupied by illegal immigrants.

[75] So there is a, or immigrants seeking asylum.

[76] So London is already bursting to overflowing.

[77] So these traffic calming measures, if they calmed traffic, great, but they don't calm traffic.

[78] It's an ideological mission to, because he cannot force you out of your car, because there would be uproar, what he's going to do is he's going to tax you out of your car.

[79] So because people will not listen to this idea that they want to be free to drive to the beach, you know, England is small, you can get to the beach in 45 minutes from London if you want to.

[80] He wants you out of your car and into these electric cars, which in their own way are digital prisons on their own.

[81] if you speak to an electric car owner, you know, some of the Uber drivers or some of the other cab companies in London, they say that they cannot, the minute they get out of London, their battery is gone.

[82] So they're hemmed in by this digital prison of their own car, whereas, you know, you can buy a Tesla and go quite a long way, but you buy a sort of mid -market gear, and you're not going anywhere.

[83] So, you know, I fully support Sidic Khan trying to clean up London but I wish he would do it with evidence instead of made -up figures.

[84] He's making up these figures of 4 ,000 people are going to die from asthma, and it's just a lie.

[85] And I struggle with people that lie openly.

[86] So he lies about, he's just been reported the other day for knife crime.

[87] He said knife crime is down in my tenure.

[88] It's not.

[89] It's up 40%.

[90] But he feels that he can tell London that knife crime is not a problem, and it's like, it really is.

[91] and in the same way, pollution is the same issue.

[92] London is a much cleaner and more wonderful city than it ever was.

[93] Yeah, well, when I grew up, cars were still synonymous with freedom.

[94] And I think in North America, especially where I grew up, because I grew up in this little town, way the hell out on the edge of the prairie, the biggest, the nearest real city was 400 miles away.

[95] And so I lived in my damn car from the time I was really, 16 onward, especially in my late teens and early 20s.

[96] I mean, car was synonymous with freedom.

[97] And, you know, I've thought for a long time that one of the most effective acts of subversion the Free West ever managed in relationship to the communist countries was to invent the automobile because the automobile is really the material embodiment of the ethos of individual freedom.

[98] You can jump in your car.

[99] Nobody knows where the hell you are.

[100] They can't keep track of you, although that's starting to change.

[101] And you can go wherever you want without asking.

[102] That's a big deal.

[103] And then when I started to see, you know, hypothetical utopians go after automobiles.

[104] I thought, man, if you hate cars, I'm probably your enemy.

[105] Cars and comedians, right?

[106] If you hate cars and you don't like comedians, there's something seriously wrong with you.

[107] And this, I started to see the war on cars in Toronto about 15 years ago.

[108] Like it just got more and more difficult to travel by car.

[109] More bloody bike lanes, which is insane in a city like Toronto, where it's frigid, bloody, cold for six months a year.

[110] You know, the only people who bike from November to March are deluded 24 -year -old men who think they're saving the planet with their goddamn bicycles.

[111] And the notion that, you know, that's going to be.

[112] a reasonable mode of transportation for like a 70 -year -old woman with her groceries is just utterly preposterous.

[113] It just got more and more difficult.

[114] And I used to annoy my family looking around saying, you know, I think there's a war on cars going on here.

[115] I can't figure it out.

[116] And, you know, it wasn't until recent years that I came across the bloody C -40 documents, which read like the worst right -wing conspiracists nightmare.

[117] Like you can't even believe that it's true.

[118] What in the world, what in the world do you think is going on at a deeper level here?

[119] And like, because obviously you're deeply enough concerned about this to have put your, well, you put your whole career on the line, which is something else that I want to talk about.

[120] But, okay, so you went out and you, you evinced explicit support for the actions of people who were taking down the ultra -low emission zone cameras, and that got you arrested.

[121] And so what are you charged with exactly, and why did you feel that this was an issue that was of sufficient import to put you and your family at real economic and legal risk?

[122] So, yeah, to answer your first question, they're considering to charge me for conspiracy to commit criminal damage and support of criminal damage of some kind.

[123] I think in the process becomes the punishment thing, we'll see where they end up.

[124] I think there's scant evidence for that.

[125] The reason why I did it is the reason why I do everything, which is progresses hate mankind.

[126] They hate mankind with a visceral hatred.

[127] And I don't.

[128] And therefore, I feel that it's important to stand up and say, you know, you expressed it very well when you were talking about the car.

[129] It's like I want to be able to take my kids and my dogs to the river.

[130] And I want to throw a ball for my dog in the river.

[131] And I want my kids to jump in the river.

[132] And I want risk and danger.

[133] And I want all of these things to happen in our lives.

[134] And I don't want my life to be like a battery hen in a house asking permission for people to do something which is my God -given right to do.

[135] And it's the, Sidney Khan.

[136] I mean, hate is really, I've been really strong.

[137] struggling with this as a concept, hate is a really difficult, we mustn't hate people.

[138] But if I was to hate, Sadiq Khan and what he stands for is something so close to what that feeling must be, he's just, it's just dreadful to try and control and out of your own weakness and nihilism and hatred of life and meaning, hatred of it all, to go, the only way I can get any meaning out of my life is to control yours.

[139] and I just go, well, I will put every tool down in that war, and I will fight you face to face over that.

[140] Let me play devil's advocate on that front, too, because, see, I've been struck in recent years by the fact that, you know, the progressives had two broad domains of metaphysical concern.

[141] One was allying themselves with the hypothetically oppressed, including the economically oppressed, and the other was saving the planet.

[142] And so I was very curious about what would happen when those two concerns went head to head, right?

[143] And so what I've seen happen, clearly, is that the progressive types, despite the fact that the grounding of their progressivism is essentially, in principle, the support of the oppressed and the poor, is that they will sacrifice the poor to the hypothetical concerns of the planet happily and in a heartbeat.

[144] Because every time I've seen the Greens, for example, make a move on the energy front, this is particularly evident in Germany and in the UK where energy prices just keep skyrocketing out of control and the sources of power are more and more unreliable and more dependent on dictatorial sources for that, that if it comes to screwing the poor with higher energy costs, which is about the most effective way you can screw them, and foregoing, saving the planet momentarily, they'll screw over the poor in a deadly fashion in no time flat.

[145] And it really is deadly.

[146] You know, Bjorn Longberg has shown statistics, for example, that show that these measures that purport to reduce energy consumption by decreasing thermostat maximum, which is law, for example, you have to do that at the bloody European Commission in Brussels, by the way.

[147] You know, that even a three -degree decrease in thermostat setting in the winter will cause several hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths of elderly people because they're so susceptible to temperature fluctuation, right?

[148] Because, and so, but the progressives are going to say to you something like, well, look, Lawrence, you might want to have your fun in games right now and take your flights and have all your clothes and all your privilege and your so -called freedom, which is actually just a marker of your willingness and ability to exploit other people.

[149] But I'm much more concerned with the situation, 50, or down the road.

[150] And you trumpet your, what would you say, you're concerned for the poor and oppressed at the moment.

[151] But I'm trying to stave off, you know, global disaster.

[152] And if we have to break a few eggs to make that omelet, it's well worth the sacrifice.

[153] And so that's the perennial argument, right, is that the future well -being of the hypothesis.

[154] So, because the argument you see is, well, when the tidal waves of climate change come visiting, it'll be the particular the poor who suffer most intensely.

[155] And so we have to make sacrifices now.

[156] We have to make sacrifices now to forestall that.

[157] What do you, I mean, you can understand that that's, in principle, a credible argument if you buy the climate change narrative.

[158] What do you think of that argument?

[159] How have you dealt with it personally?

[160] Well, I would say that the reason why the climate argument and the socioeconomic argument, climate one, was because socioeconomically we're very fluid.

[161] Capitalism with all its weaknesses is quite a fluid system.

[162] My brother -in -law went from a council house in Ipswich to being a really, really wealthy film director.

[163] So, you know, this stuff happens in Britain, and it happens all across the West.

[164] So they sort of left that alone.

[165] And then in response to the second question, I would say, give me a single climate prediction that these people have ever come out with, which wasn't debunked within five years.

[166] And again, I don't, we've got to assume the good faith in people.

[167] And we want a good, we want a healthy planet.

[168] We want a cleaner future for our children.

[169] We already have one.

[170] And it would seem to me that the best way of making the world a cleaner place is to make people richer, you know, because I've sat, I've sat on boats in the South China Sea driving between islands and watch people finish their polystyrene things that you used to get a McDonald's in the 80s and just throw them overboard.

[171] And that's how they dealt with it.

[172] And I think it was because they were too busy doing something else.

[173] But if these people were wealthier, the A, they'd be, you know, you've spoken about this before, using better fuel, and B, you know, wealth is the greatest thing you can give someone to give them an opportunity to be responsible for the planet that they're going to pass on to their children.

[174] Right.

[175] Okay.

[176] So your argument, and I believe this to be the credible argument, is that if you were genuinely concerned with the poor and the planet, rather than merely hating the military -industrial capitalist complex and humanity in general.

[177] You would take a stark look at the facts.

[178] You would understand that transitioning our economies from wood and dung through coal fossil fuel to nuclear is an appropriate transition and one that's time -tested.

[179] It would lift the bottom billion or two billion people out of the abject poverty that they still dwell in, and it would simultaneously be of benefit to the planet.

[180] And you'd also, I think, ally that with a view that we should pull out all the stops on the nuclear front, because nuclear energy is unbelievably dense, we're much better at producing the reactors if we could get rid of the red tape than we were 50 years ago.

[181] And so the other thing that makes me so skeptical of the we love the poor and the planet utopian narrative is that the greens almost inevitably object to nuclear energy.

[182] And that's just a bloody miracle, isn't it?

[183] Because if it's carbon, that is the catastrophe, and that catastrophe is so impending that it justifies the suspension of everyone's civil rights and the imposition of a lower standard of living on the poor, which is going to knock a lot of them into abject poverty, then how the hell can you not make a case for nuclear?

[184] Like if it's an emergency, even if nuclear is a risk, and I don't really think it is, at least compared to other risks, then obviously in an environment where all measures whatsoever are justified, an emergency transition to nuclear rather than to unreliable, unreliable so -called renewables, which aren't renewable at all, that would be in the cards.

[185] And so, you know, the fact that that isn't happening, it's one of those places where you see the internal contradictions of the ideology make itself manifest.

[186] It's like, well, you know, I worked for the UN years ago on the first really sustainable development document.

[187] And I'm morally hold as a consequence of that.

[188] I would say in my defense that the document the UN would have produced had the team I was involved with.

[189] It wasn't my team.

[190] It was Jim Balsley's team.

[191] he used to run rim.

[192] If we hadn't rewritten that document, it would be a hell of a lot more socialist and humanity hating than it ended up being.

[193] So, I don't know, if you serve a lesser evil, if you serve to transform an evil into a lesser evil, does that mean that what you did was good?

[194] You know, you could argue about that.

[195] But what I really came to understand when I worked on that panel was that all the evidence suggested exactly what you said which is that if you got people above about $5 ,000 a year in average GDP, they immediately started to take a long -term view of the environment.

[196] And so it seems like the fastest way to a green planet is through wealth, but we have this anti -human narrative that's been thrust upon us as an alternative, which is that, well, really, the carrying capacity of the planet is only about 500 million people, and those people would have to live at a pre -industrial, you know, standard of living.

[197] I don't know if they're supposed to all be bloody hippies out on some, you know, island utopia farming their goddamn goats and their chickens, you know, which is a dreadful way to live.

[198] And I've watched hippies try to do that with, you know, catastrophic consequences because hand to mouth is no damn fun.

[199] And it also begs the question, what are you going to do with the extra seven and a half billion people?

[200] And that's where I see, like, the real danger of this sort of utopian scheme I can't understand how you can make the claim that the planet has too many people on it without simultaneously selling your soul to Satan.

[201] You know, and I mean that, you know, I mean that almost literally.

[202] It's like that's such an awful claim.

[203] There's too many people.

[204] Okay, buddy, which people?

[205] Exactly.

[206] I call it German beach towel syndrome.

[207] So when you're in a hotel, and you check into the hotel and you're trying to go down to the pool and someone has woken up, usually a German.

[208] In England, we mocked the Germans for doing this.

[209] And they've taken all of the beach chairs.

[210] And it's like, we need them for us.

[211] And then they don't even turn up during the day.

[212] I think it's an uninterrupted view between your paradise and the sea and any plebs, any people who get in the way of your uninterrupted view, which you deserve, because you think correctly, you see that there's a problem and you're willing to do something about it, is seen in some way as noble.

[213] And in my view, that is anti -human.

[214] And also, I grew up in a Christian family.

[215] I've been imbued with a lot of things from Christianity, which I just can't get out of my head.

[216] And one of them is that we're all made equal in the eyes of God.

[217] Therefore, I feel that's a really good place to start any conversation.

[218] So it helps with any conversations to do with poverty, with race, with any other issue to go, look, we're equal, but we have different opportunities.

[219] And this idea that, you know, the hypocrites who fly their jets around the world telling us that we mustn't eat meat anymore, or Sadiq Khan, who gets his 300 ,000 pound armor -plated range rover to drive him three miles to walk his dog with his wife, with his security detail.

[220] But we can't get in a car and take our kids to the beach and have a fire and cook some sausages.

[221] You have to pick a side at that point.

[222] You just have to go, I've picked my side.

[223] Yeah, well, you pick a side one way or another, man. And everybody's going to find that out in the next five to ten years.

[224] Okay, so let me push you on something else, too.

[225] So, when I was retweeting your tweets, supporting the, or indicating admiration, let's say, for the actions of people who were cutting down the spy cameras.

[226] See, I was shocked when I went to London 15 years ago about how many of those bloody CTTV cameras there were everywhere.

[227] And I thought, this is not good because the UK is the home of Democratic free.

[228] fundamentally, as far as I'm concerned.

[229] Like, it's the epicenter.

[230] And the fact that you guys put those bloody cameras everywhere, it's just, you know, it's just in the name of safety, safety, except that you're being watched by, like, authoritarian cameras all the time, which doesn't strike me as safe.

[231] And then that's just multiplied and multiplied.

[232] You know, in China now, there's 700 million cameras.

[233] They just watch everyone all the time.

[234] They do gate recognition.

[235] So even if your face is covered, they can recognize your track.

[236] 100 % of the time, and that's certainly a potential future that we could have.

[237] That idea was extended, too, into this insistence that your car is so dangerous that we have to track you wherever you go in case you're, like, outputting some iota of carbon or particulate.

[238] So, but there's a contradiction here if you're conservative in your, or even libertarian, conservative, particularly in your political inclinations.

[239] It's like I do have some unease in expressing my support for direct civil unrest, right?

[240] I mean, cutting down cameras is not nothing.

[241] It's, it's, it is technically a criminal act.

[242] How do you reconcile the fact that you're calling for that you're supporting the actions that vigilante types are taking to push back against Khan with the conservative insistence that by and large it's a citizen's responsibility to uphold the law.

[243] How do you draw the line there?

[244] Well, I think I apply a sort of a very simple rule, which is the rule of fly tipping, which is, you're not allowed to flight it.

[245] If you go and offload a van full of waste and washing machines and free freezes on the side of the motorway, you're prosecuted for it.

[246] That's what you do.

[247] So no one voted.

[248] So we have these low traffic neighbourhoods as well where they stick a big plant pot in the middle of the road and you can't drive through.

[249] People can't go into hospitals.

[250] People can't do anything.

[251] So I see this as digital fly tipping.

[252] It wasn't there yesterday.

[253] The world was the same world.

[254] It is there today.

[255] The world is now.

[256] a less free world and no one has benefited as a result of it.

[257] So I see it less is looking at the law.

[258] I see it as removing unwanted digital waste from your community.

[259] And we're always encouraged to, you know, look out for each other and protect your neighbour and all of this sort of stuff.

[260] So I see it as that.

[261] And I think a large proportion of Londoners also do see it as that as we see with the, I mean, I can't encourage their work anymore because my free speech has been controlled by the Metropolitan Police.

[262] But, you know, I see it as a civic duty when moral wrong is committed, it is your civic duty to do anything and everything in your power to do it, to undo it.

[263] Okay, okay.

[264] So let's imagine for a moment that I'm one of these just stop oil characters.

[265] And I believe that the planet is in existential trouble because of climate change.

[266] That's going to run away.

[267] and because of that I also take to myself the right to break laws to impede traffic flow to glue myself to a spectacular painting I mean how do you how do you I wouldn't say convince yourself you see what I mean is that there's this danger in people taking matters into their own hands right it's the danger of social unrest versus the danger of social unrest of hyper obedience, right?

[268] But the just -stop oil protester types, the people who are going too far on the globalist utopian side seem to be using similar communitarian arguments.

[269] Now, you know, I don't, I think that the fact that the just -stop oil protesters interfere with traffic flow is inexcusable, fundamentally.

[270] And I don't buy their argument, but it's complicated for me to think through precisely.

[271] I mean, you have to go all the way down to first principles to some degree.

[272] You mentioned in your previous remarks your proposition that each person is made in the image of God, and that's getting pretty close down to first principles.

[273] I mean, I don't know.

[274] Sorry, I'm wondering around in this question, but you get the point is that what is being done by the people who are cutting down the cameras is analogous with a different set of metaphysical propositions to what is being done by the just stop oil protesters.

[275] and so it isn't exactly obvious to me how to draw the proper moral distinction.

[276] Well, I think it is possible to draw a moral distinction over stopping traffic flow because obstructing the King's Highway has been illegal since forever.

[277] So stopping people going to and from work and preventing ambulance is getting to and from hospital.

[278] That is clearly an egregiously wrong thing to do.

[279] Taking an angle, oh, can I say this?

[280] taking an angle grinder to a lamp post that was not previously there.

[281] I see what you're saying, which is like, at what point does a citizenry take the law into their own hands?

[282] It's really difficult.

[283] It is really difficult.

[284] I would, for example, I think the more the just -stop oil people throw orange paint on masterpieces, the better.

[285] Because the more people will just go, yuck.

[286] And they don't have any public support for doing so.

[287] And I think that the public support, the overwhelming public support for what's, even we've had Ian Duncan Smith, who as a former leader of the Conservative Party, has expressed his, if not support, but his understanding as to why these people are doing what they're doing.

[288] Okay, so one of the things you're referring to is the fact that that that's an argument that's essentially grounded in appreciation of the sovereignty of the people, is that if you, you know, I think I read at one point.

[289] this might be wrong, but it's a good illustration of the principal.

[290] I think it was the Netherlands that had a custom or legislation that if 75 % of Netherlands citizens broke a given law, you had to get rid of the law.

[291] Right.

[292] So there is, there's got to be some idea that the law, although it has to shape people and inhibit them to some degree, it should sit on a basis of mutual consent.

[293] And And that brings us to another issue, too.

[294] I've been thinking this through, especially with regard to what happened during the COVID lockdown.

[295] You know, and if there's an emergency, you can understand that, you can understand the argument that some civil liberties might have to be lifted to deal with the emergency.

[296] You can understand that argument in principle.

[297] But my sense is that if someone is calling for an emergency, claiming an emergency, and simultaneously pointing to the fact that civil liberties are to be suspended in consequence, the first conclusion you should draw from that is that they're probably wolves in sheep's clothing.

[298] They're probably tyrants.

[299] And that the argument is actually the reverse.

[300] They want to impose control.

[301] And so they're generating an emergency.

[302] And we should demand, what do they say, radical claims require overwhelming evidence.

[303] It's something like that.

[304] And so our general census citizens should be, if your bloody emergency, if you're calling for an emergency that grants you additional power, you would have to prove every which way that you're not just a tyrant who's lying.

[305] That should be the default thumb, you know, the rule of thumb.

[306] And so the same thing seems to me to apply with these CCTVs and this widespread surveillance.

[307] It's like you claim to be acting as a consequence of being motivated by the highest possible virtue.

[308] You know, if it's not God, it's your version of compassion, which is the modern God.

[309] But the fact that you're accruing all the power as a consequence, seems like a coincidence a little bit too, that's cutting a bit too close to the bone to ignore.

[310] And this seems to be happening, yep.

[311] I think that first and foremost, there's got to be a free speech element to this.

[312] So you've got to be able to criticize something, be it lockdowns, be it Sadiq Khan's ridiculous climate scam schemes or anything.

[313] So we have to put free speech to the primacy of the center of a, of any single argument.

[314] The second thing that one's got to look at is if we are banned from discussing an issue at all, it needs discussing.

[315] So, for example, the so -called climate emergency.

[316] We're told there is a climate emergency.

[317] It's not up for discussion.

[318] There is a deadly virus.

[319] It's not up for discussion.

[320] This is the only treatment.

[321] If you're banned from doing that, you need to talk about it.

[322] And the third thing is, if you're trying to make the world a better place, and a cleaner and happier and more, you know, fuel -efficient place, and you want to build 15 -minute cities where I can walk to my barber, I can walk to my supermarket, then build me the infrastructure before you build me the controlling mechanisms to which you're going to shut down my life.

[323] Yeah, well, that's a really good point.

[324] You know, like when this 15 -minute city thing came up, you know, it was so interesting to watch it morph, because I looked at the plans of the new urban planners, let's say, 15 years ago.

[325] And in North America in particular, our cities are blighted by the spread of these McMansion suburbs or even just middle -class suburbs that really have no community center, right?

[326] There's no shopping malls, there's no bars, there's no churches, there's no downtown.

[327] There's just an endless sprawl of identical houses.

[328] And there's something soul -debdening about them.

[329] They're not constructed in a manner that makes for human flourishing because there's no social, element to the community.

[330] They're just boxes with individuals in them, right?

[331] And inside the box, there are other boxes where everyone's with their camera or with their phone in their own atomized environment.

[332] And so when the new urbanists started to talk about, you know, building localized centers where things were within walkable distance and there were and there were the sorts of things that you might want to walk to, like a community center and a church and a pub and a theater.

[333] I thought, well, that makes perfect sense.

[334] You shouldn't have to hop in your car every time you want to, you know, grab a loaf of bread.

[335] But then it was so interesting to watch that the seed of a good idea be immediately, what would you say, gripped onto by the moralizing utopists who immediately conjured up a way to make the 15 -minute cities into something like digital prisons.

[336] It was quite a miracle to watch that transformation occur.

[337] And you pointed to something of cardinal importance.

[338] It's like, look, and I think this is where the free marketers have it over the centralizes as well.

[339] It's like if you want to build people a 15 -minute city that's unbelievably inviting so that people flock there and voluntarily leave their automobiles at home because they can walk wherever they want, and that's easier, then have Adder.

[340] And if you make a fortune doing it, you know, two thumbs up for you.

[341] But if you start with the force and the compulsion and the deprivation of civil liberties, we should suspect immediately that you're not just going to start there.

[342] That's going to be the whole bloody thing.

[343] And that whatever you're offering is just, well, it's a false reward for accepting this imposition of force.

[344] Same thing.

[345] And so maybe this is a good rule of thumb for people to abide by, which is that we're trying to do this with this arc. enterprise that just had its conference in London, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, we have a rule of thumb.

[346] All policy based on force is at least suboptimal, if not outright wrong.

[347] If I can't do something in a manner that invites you voluntarily, then I'm wrong.

[348] I want to tell you a little story about that.

[349] You tell me what you think about this.

[350] We were talking about the Christianity of your youth.

[351] I just did a seminar on Exodus with a group of scholars, and we released that on the Daily Wire platform and on YouTube, and that was quite successful.

[352] There's a real cool part of that story.

[353] So it has to do with Moses.

[354] So Moses is the archetypal figure who fights tyranny and redeems the slave.

[355] And so you can imagine that insofar as you're a fully functioning social being who's moral, that's what you do.

[356] You oppose tyranny, and you grant responsibility and dignity and direction to the slaves.

[357] Okay, so that's what Moses does.

[358] And he does this for like four decades, right?

[359] 40 years in the desert.

[360] He puts his life on the line.

[361] He sacrifices his whole life to this enterprise, standing up against the Pharaoh, which was a deadly thing to do, and then leading his people through their confusion in the desert.

[362] So they drop their tyranny, and then they're confused for 40 years.

[363] Now, just as he reaches the promised land, So the archetypal structure here is everybody's journeying to the place they want to go to, right?

[364] No matter what you're doing, you're always trying to journey to the place you want to go to.

[365] That's the promised land.

[366] So Moses has done this assiduously for four decades.

[367] Now, he's right on the threshold of the promised land.

[368] And the Israelites are all bitching and whining and squawking away because they're out of water again.

[369] And so Moses goes to God and he says, well, you know, we need some water.

[370] and God says, well, you're going to find some rocks, and he tells him where, and he says, go speak to the rocks, and they'll issue forth water.

[371] And Moses goes, but instead of speaking to the rocks, he hits them with his staff.

[372] And his staff is a symbol of authority and tradition, right?

[373] So he strikes the rock, and then he strikes it again.

[374] And the water does come forth from the rock.

[375] But God tells him that because he used force instead of words, that he will die before he enters the promised land.

[376] It's such a striking, yeah, right, it's such a striking story, because you have this person who's as close to a savior as anyone in the Old Testament, right?

[377] I mean, Moses, he's, I think he's the central figure of the Old Testament.

[378] You know, you could argue about that, but he's certainly a central figure, and so he does things about as well as you could hope anyone could do, and yet the punishment for him for using force, even in that relatively trivial manner, is that He can't make the utopia make itself manifest, right?

[379] That's how dangerous force is.

[380] And so maybe we could use as a rule of thumb the idea that anybody who's trying to push you to do anything, if they're actually trying to push you, they're not to be trusted.

[381] If they can't formulate their doctrine as an invitation, a voluntary invitation, at minimum they're incompetent and probably they're psychopathic and tyrannical.

[382] Yeah, I mean, I think you touch on possibly the most important question of this fluctuating time that we live in, which is what comes next?

[383] Does, do the so -called or the self -appointed right -thinking men bash their staves on the head of the radical woke ideologues, the racists, the people who wish to tear this society apart, do we bash our staff and say no?

[384] Or do we have faith in God to ask?

[385] And I think, look, I'm in no way a theologian and I'm in no way someone who is able to speak on biblical matters in any way at all.

[386] But I think there's something in that story, which is fascinating because I have a very, very strong desire and I know it's a personal and a human and a fallible desire to go, you know what, these people need cancelling.

[387] We need to cancel these people.

[388] They have brought terror and horror on.

[389] I mean, they've destroyed a large part of my life, but they gave me a new one, so that was okay.

[390] But they bring misery everywhere.

[391] And you think, you know, what does one do back?

[392] suppose, you know, the closest I can come to it now is if God is saying you just offer the word and the water will come, then maybe it is literally that simple.

[393] It is we encourage comics.

[394] We encourage those people to speak and not compel.

[395] We encourage people to be courageous in their words, not in their desire to play the same game as those that they don't agree with play.

[396] And I struggle with this all the time because I get more and more and more and more frustrated because, you know, we have this same thing with Sadiq Khan.

[397] He has a block vote.

[398] We have, obviously, we have, you know, the US and the UK have the same problem with unfettered and uncontrolled immigration, which only affects the poorest people in society, including immigrants.

[399] And you just think this has got to stop.

[400] We have to compel you to do this.

[401] But actually, I think there is something wonderful in the human, in the mystery of the human, which is that, you know...

[402] speak gently and carry a big stick.

[403] You know what I mean?

[404] There's something better about that.

[405] Well, one of the things I've really noticed on social media, and I think this is most stark on Twitter.

[406] So since I made a comment that was somewhat impulsive on Twitter about the Israel -Hamas conflict, I've restructured the way I'm interacting on Twitter.

[407] And so instead of redistributing anti -Semitism, woke material, you know, which has that forceful, kind of forceful element to it, right?

[408] We need to put a stop to this.

[409] And like I've had, so I've been persecuted by my college of psychologists in Ontario, and it's very annoying.

[410] And I have a temper.

[411] And I'm not that afraid to use it.

[412] And I've had some pretty bloody, brutal fantasies about just exactly what I'm, I'd like to do to the office of the College of Psychologists, you know?

[413] And there's a part of me that not only thinks that's justified and necessary, but would also kind of glory in it, you know?

[414] But one of the things I've noticed, Lawrence, is that, and this is especially true on Twitter, is that we've turned my Twitter feed into something that's basically putting out positive messages that are pulled from my writings, right?

[415] You can think about them as invitational messages.

[416] And I've also seen this on YouTube.

[417] You know, when I do a more political interview that's oriented more towards fighting back against the utopian radicals, the Twitter comment or the comment feed gets pretty vitriolic and quite polarized and often quite unpleasant.

[418] Whereas if the message is invitational, you know, laying out an alternative vision that's positive and talking to someone about how that might come about which is what we did at the ARC conference then all of a sudden the comment sections are extremely positive and I would also say that those messages especially now attract more attention than the more political messages and so you know so maybe it is that it's incumbent and this seems to be associated you tell me what you think about this it seems to be associated with the doctrines of you know turn the other cheek and resist not evil, you know.

[419] And part of the reason I really wanted to talk to you today is because both of us have paid a rather complex personal price for taking the stands that we've taken.

[420] Now, it's certainly not been for me. It's certainly not being something that was without its opportunities, quite the contrary.

[421] You know, in some ways, it's the best thing that ever happened to me, although some of it was pretty rough.

[422] You know, I lost my research career, I lost my university career, and my clinical practice had to shut down.

[423] I mean, I spent decades investing into those enterprises, and I was good at them, and I enjoyed them.

[424] And so sacrificing them was not nothing, even though the consequences of that have been remarkable.

[425] But I am trying to work through the notion that maybe all of us, all that those of us who are opposing the centralizing, power, mad, woke humanity hating woke mob should be doing is putting forth an alternative vision that's invitational you know now that that gets us back to the initial question which is well does that mean that it's reasonable to tweet out support for people who are you know practically opposing the proliferation of CCTV cameras you know that's a place where the rubber hits the road and I'm still conflicted about that because I hate those goddamn cameras I think they're unbelievably dangerous.

[426] And I feel that you're morally obligated to dispense with them.

[427] That's what you do in the celebration of freedom.

[428] All arguments about security.

[429] Last thing we need is a security state.

[430] There's no security in a security state.

[431] You give up all security in a security state.

[432] And I don't know how to reconcile that necessity for active opposition to the more blatant forms of tyrannical surveillance with the notion that an invitational vision that abjure's use of force is clearly both more attractive and perhaps more practically, what would you say, and perhaps more practical.

[433] So what do you think of that?

[434] You're a temperamental guy, so you know you've got an inclination to have the scrap.

[435] I think there's a humor to it.

[436] and I think the thing about the guys that I'm not allowed to say the name of is that there's a humour to it that there's something about it which is we know we're never going to beat the big system but we're not going to go down without a fight and no one is getting harmed in the process so this isn't like a like the equivalent of taking a man who suddenly wants to put on a wig and putting him in a woman prison.

[437] This is removing something that they don't want and no one got hurt doing it other than the, you know, taxpayer, essentially, or the mayor in his silly scheme.

[438] So I think if you apply a level of humor, humanity to it, then I think it has some value.

[439] But I do agree with you, look, we're going to, as we enter this most difficult phase of the conflict, if that's, if I'm talking about it correctly, all of the weapons that we have tried to defend ourselves with are going to be used as cudgels to destroy us with.

[440] Certainly over stuff like free speech.

[441] Why shouldn't I sing from the river to the sea?

[442] Why shouldn't I call, you know, you saw the debacle in the Senate hearing where they were saying, well, maybe it's bad calling it hot.

[443] They're going to, and her first thing in her apology note was to say, well, I was just upholding the First Amendment, the right to free speech.

[444] Oh, yeah.

[445] Oh, man. Yeah, right.

[446] At Harvard.

[447] Oh, yes.

[448] That was ranked 248 out of 248 universities for free speech.

[449] That was just beyond absolutely bloody beyond comprehension.

[450] But then how, but we're standing for free speech?

[451] How do we, how do we as human beings who, I think one of the differentiating factors between us, is that I do not hate woke people.

[452] And I said this at the beginning.

[453] It's really hard not to hate Sidney Khan because he's a really horrible guy.

[454] But I don't hate him.

[455] I hate what he does.

[456] I hate what he does, but I don't hate him.

[457] So I think one of the things that is the differentiating factor is, and that's not to put yourself in a morally superior position, but is to turn around and say, I don't hate you as a person.

[458] I just hate what you're doing.

[459] Is it reasonable to say that it's okay to hate what people in that situation are possessed by?

[460] Yeah, I can say.

[461] Because, well, that seems to me to be the right level of analysis, is that you can see, it's sort of like the idea of a principality, you know, I can see these systems of ideas that are at war, right?

[462] There are systems of ideas at war.

[463] And the system of ideas that's on the woke side is the meta -Marxism of the postmodernists, right?

[464] Everything's a victim, victimizer narrative.

[465] It's an all -devouring ideology that grants moral propriety to its upholders.

[466] It's an unbelievably dangerous enterprise.

[467] But it is impersonal in some ways in that if you have a hundred radicals, they all have the same idea.

[468] And so it's not them.

[469] It's the, and, you know, and that means that the proper level for the battle is philosophical or theological or spiritual or ideational or psychological rather than physical.

[470] Maybe it's only when you lose the battle that you have to resort to physical means.

[471] You also talked about the utility of humor.

[472] But I had, just quickly let me just lob something in there.

[473] I've been in court the last 10 days.

[474] reliable trial.

[475] And I watched everybody who was against me who tried to destroy my life.

[476] That's what they've done.

[477] And I thought, I'd really like to go up for a beer with you guys.

[478] Because aside from this one little kind of crazy woke thing where you're completely right about everything and I'm a, you're a total moral supremacist and I'm wrong and I need to educate myself, aside from that one pervasive and albeit deadly character floor, I'd really like to go out for a beer with you.

[479] And I have a strong feeling that none of them would like to go out for a beer with me. No, I think that's a really good observation, you know, because when I was surrounded by screeching harpy students and often female and then their idiot male enablers who were generally psychopaths, What I kept remembering was, well, you know, you're 19.

[480] If I was at a dinner party at your parents' house, I would probably think that you were a pretty decent young person with some crazy ideas, rather than that you're just an absolute bloody serpentine mess of crazy ideas with a tiny bit of good person associated.

[481] It's not like that at all.

[482] And I've thought about this, too, sort of technically speaking, you know, is that, Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, he noted that he'd get a bunch of kids together and they can play a game coherently according to a coherent set of rules.

[483] But if they were young enough, if you separated them and asked them what the rules were, you got wildly disparate accounts.

[484] So together, they could play the game because each of them had fragmentary knowledge of the game, but as a unit, all the knowledge was there.

[485] It's sort of like a group of 100 university protesters, is that because there's a lot of a hundred of them, the whole bloody pathological principality is there.

[486] But in each person, they're like 10 % possessed, right?

[487] And so maybe what you do when you don't hate the person is that you have the possibility of separating the wheat from the chaff, what you would hope for for your would -be ideological enemy is that free expression of idea in genuine dialogue would free them from the grip of their possession.

[488] And then you'd have another useful person around, which seems to be a lot better than, well, the potentially negative consequences of full -on combat.

[489] You know, you mentioned, I had a journalist friend of mine say something similar to me this week, by the way.

[490] He said, very wise man with much experience.

[491] He said, he believes that we're entering the most difficult phase of this conflict.

[492] And you alluded to something similar.

[493] Why did that idea make itself present to you?

[494] And why do you regard that as an accurate summation of what's happening?

[495] I think it's difficult.

[496] As an actor, you're trained.

[497] A tiny part of your brain is trained.

[498] It's such a small part of your brain.

[499] It's to be present and to remember.

[500] at the same time.

[501] So it's a tiny part of your brain in conflict.

[502] And that creates a sense of, I can see something's happening.

[503] And actually, it came to me by realizing sitting in court.

[504] When you put this ideology to reason, to cold scrutiny, to proper and rigorous inquiry, it has nowhere to go.

[505] It has nowhere to run.

[506] It can't survive a conversation.

[507] None of it can survive a conversation.

[508] And you notice that as, you know, these little sparks that appear in society like anti -Semitism and people feeling that they can identify totally as their own little crowd group in Britain, you think that people are beginning to run out of patience.

[509] And they're just signs.

[510] And I think Peter Bogotian put it really, really well.

[511] he said this is coming to an end and everyone is going to say that they never paid bar.

[512] And I have, I suppose in a sort of roundabout and rather stupid way, I'm trying to say I can tell it's coming to an end.

[513] I can just see it coming to an end and I know it's coming to an end because it doesn't make any sense and nature of balls a vacuum and we've had a vacuum now for a very very long time.

[514] Okay so I'll play devil's advocate there again so I was talking to I talk frequently with both Jonathan Pazzo, who's been a cardinal player in this Ark Enterprise, who's a very wise person.

[515] And with Michael Mellis, they're quite different people because Pazzo is an icon carver and a deep Christian, trained as well in the postmodern ethos.

[516] So he understands both sides of the argument.

[517] And Michael Malice is kind of a libertarian anarchist.

[518] But both of them have the both of them believe that we're not going to get through this bout of ideological conflict without some really serious trouble.

[519] And my sense is more agnostic.

[520] I believe that the future isn't written in blood, and that if we conducted ourselves wisely, we could have a virtual apocalypse, let's say, instead of the real thing, that we could work this out in the realm of ideas, we could tilt ourselves back on the upward path without the kind of mayhem that sometimes accompanies a transformation of ideology.

[521] Now, there's some precedent for this.

[522] Obviously, when the Soviet Union collapsed, that was much less bloody than we had any right to hope or expect.

[523] But then I'm really torn about this because I look at the universities and I think, oh my God, you guys are so far gone that nothing but your total collapse is going to bring about a transformation.

[524] And when I start thinking that that's a rather pessimistic view, something like what happened in Washington happens, and you get the president of MIT and Harvard, and you pen all three woefully underqualified for the job, come out and say in unison something so utterly blood -curdling and preposterous that it's surreal.

[525] You think, well, it's a long ways yet to the bottom.

[526] And so you think it's going to come, you think you intimated that you believe that this is going to come to an end.

[527] I just can't, I don't have any vision of how things are going to lay themselves out over the next few years.

[528] I can't predict it.

[529] And so, but you said you have a sense.

[530] I can see, look, I put up five YouTube videos last year that were all critical of the climate narrative.

[531] And basically, nothing happened to me as a consequence.

[532] YouTube put up a few warnings, you know, that like they always do about how climate change is this ultimate catastrophe.

[533] But they left them alone.

[534] And almost all the comments were positive.

[535] And certainly, the climate catastrophe narrative has taken a vicious hit in the last year.

[536] And people are pretty tired of the trans -stupidity.

[537] So, but then you see the depth of corruption in places like the universities and you think, oh my God, you know, how much trouble is there going to have to be before sanity does prevail.

[538] I suppose what gives you a sense that things are going to change.

[539] I was quite affected by something that you said quite early on.

[540] And weirdly, my dad, who broke the car, like he slammed the brakes on in the car when I was about eight years old, and he went post -modernism is evil.

[541] And I was like, well, I didn't understand, but I could just remember it.

[542] And he was obviously listening to the BBC or something.

[543] And you said this thing quite early on, and he was a dad actually introduced all of us to you to varying degrees of love.

[544] Let's put it that way.

[545] And one of the things that I thought was this idea that you raised, which was when this thing is overthrown, what comes?

[546] A sort of Hitlerian figure comes, doesn't he?

[547] out of the Weimar, which is, you know, Victor Davis -Hansson talks about how we're in this sort of leisure, affluent Weimar period, and from that comes a Hitlerian figure.

[548] And one of the greatest things that I think about Britain, and John Anderson said this to me as well, when he spoke, he said, when things get really, really bad, people are going to look at Britain.

[549] They're going to look to Britain, and they're going to look at your legal system, and we're going to look at the way that you've been going around, you know, you've reformed, you've unreformed, you've, you've reversed revolutions, you've done all this stuff.

[550] And I think that there is, within the English patients, the fundamental English patients, there's a real stoic solidness to it.

[551] And I think that that's what will ultimately end this period, that we cannot have, people are now openly laughing at the way universities are talked about in the UK, anyone who is vaguely awake is turning around and saying you know don't send your kids to universities we do what we do via the bad law project to challenge the government over certainly stuff that they're teaching in schools and I think a sort of bloodless coup is possible but part of me is like this is going to end violently but it might end violently it might end violently in a sort of in a good way for want of a better word, which is that they get so upset and so angry and so annoyed that no one is listening to them and that British people still want to protect their culture and not have it diluted and stuff like that, that there's a big riot.

[552] We've already seen what's going on in London over the last three weeks, and Britain just galvanises itself.

[553] We're very tough like that.

[554] And that gives me some hope.

[555] Admittedly, it's fleeting often, but it does give me some...

[556] It gives me hope that it can be...

[557] How quickly was McCarthyism, they just said go, didn't they?

[558] It was just like goodbye, out.

[559] And I think that something similar might happen.

[560] Well, it might depend, you know, it might depend on how effectively, it will depend, I think, on how effectively people conduct themselves.

[561] And, you know, I think that for people like you and I, whatever we can do to strive to keep enmity out of our whole, hearts is going to all be to the good, you know, like I am very unimpressed with the leader of Canada.

[562] I would have a very difficult time shaking his hand.

[563] I really detest him.

[564] And, you know, possibly the right attitude would be to wish the better part of him well and to hope that he could escape from his narcissistic entrapment, you know.

[565] But he won't.

[566] That's probably, well, you know, stranger things have.

[567] happened, it is possible for people to undergo quite dramatic transformations of character.

[568] I mean, that happens to Paul, to Saul, on the way to Damascus, right?

[569] I mean, you can have a transformative moment, and I suppose if you had any sense, that's what you'd wish for, for everyone, that they could see the light properly.

[570] I think that if people on the alternative vision side, while we're seeing this with Ark, You know, like we put a bunch of videos up on YouTube that came from the ARC conference.

[571] And the more political they are, the less popular they are.

[572] The more visionary, the more metaphysical, and the more humorous they are, the better they're performing.

[573] And then the comments are also extremely positive on the apolitical visionary talks and very negative on the political talks.

[574] And so I think that is a reflection, too, of the fact that, that if we're going to, those of us who are interested in standing against the use of arbitrary force should be very careful about not even secretly being pleased when unnecessary force is used.

[575] Well, again, and that's another thing that makes the camera issue so bloody complicated.

[576] I mean, I still think your arguments about opposing their distribution is, I think your arguments are correct.

[577] that that form of civil disobedience is not only appropriate but morally called for.

[578] You also mentioned, you know, that one of your hallmarks for distinguishing between useful and dangerous civil disobedience is the humor that goes along with it.

[579] And I, you know, that, I think that's a really good marker too.

[580] The best, the most popular speech that emerged out of the art conference was Constantine Kisen's speech.

[581] you know and constantine is damn good at interleaving the serious with the lighthearted and self -deprecating and absurd so there is something about that allowance for the absurd that does seem to be a touchstone for honest communication you see that too you know so many of the great YouTubers or comedians or ex -comedians right and I that's not fluke there they're good at listening to the audience and they don't take themselves too seriously, you know, and those are profound markers of the sort of character that you might be able to trust.

[582] Let me ask you...

[583] Sorry.

[584] Go ahead.

[585] Go ahead.

[586] I was just saying perhaps we're witnessing one of the other things that we're witnessing, which is either new or not new, my knowledge of history is not obviously the greatest, is this idea of the political influencer via social media.

[587] The absence of a political leader, you know, we've got the Labor Party and the Conservative Party in the UK.

[588] The Conservative Party took in 30 million in donations in last quarter of 2022, or whenever it was.

[589] Labor took in 3 million.

[590] The Insurgent Party reform, which is currently polling, they say, at 10%, took in £20 ,000.

[591] So it seems to me that there is zero appetite for a change politically.

[592] but there is a huge appetite for a change culturally or a realignment culturally so that people always say to me, you know, you get it times a million, but when I'm stopped on the street, people say to me, thank you for trying to protect our culture.

[593] Thank you.

[594] And that comes from weird, not weirdly, just normally, but it's overwhelmingly people who are new arrivals to this country, who came to this country to succeed, who want to play on a fair playing field.

[595] They wanted to leave the oppressions and the oppression hierarchies are the places that they lived in before behind, and they wanted to fight on a fair playing field.

[596] And so I wonder whether we're also going to see the rise in the political influencer.

[597] You know, the rock might run for it, or Tucker Carlson might become, you know, Trump's VP, doubtable, but it is.

[598] But whether the entire social media landscape and all of the new media has, you know, you've got it with a daily wire.

[599] You know, Ben Shapiro decided to run for office.

[600] Who knows what would happen?

[601] It's a sort of strange element.

[602] Anyway, that was my sort of aside to your point.

[603] Let me ask you something more personal here for a bit.

[604] I, I, what exactly is happening with you as a consequence of the legal entanglements that have enveloped you?

[605] Like, what are you in danger of?

[606] I mean, I know the process is the punishment, and everyone, the police who came to round you up are part and parcel of that.

[607] What were the police like?

[608] What are the police like, like, the thing that's so striking to me about the police in the UK and in North America is that isn't obvious to me that their natural allies are the, you know, woke utopians.

[609] And so how did the police who came, tell us the story about the police coming to your house, How did they treat you?

[610] And what's your family?

[611] What are you and your family going through at the moment?

[612] Okay, so the police, I have to confess to being a pathetic actor, and actors always want to please their audience.

[613] So when the police turned up, I tried to make friends with them.

[614] And I could make friends with everyone except for one, for the arresting officer who'd got his big day.

[615] And that was hard.

[616] But even by the end of the day, I think I'd want him around.

[617] And look, I said to them, can I take a book with me?

[618] Because I'm going to be in the cells.

[619] And they were nice enough to let me take a book.

[620] So I finished off the Guleyga archipelago.

[621] Oh, yeah.

[622] Quite a useful time in the cells.

[623] And you're thinking, well, I don't have it that bad.

[624] In terms of the police, I think they, you know, I think that, again, I want to apply this.

[625] And I must apply this, because otherwise I would go insane, that what people are doing is not necessarily who they are.

[626] So I think that, you know, there was a sort of, they were quite charged up when they came in and they really wanted to get involved.

[627] But by the end of the day, I think I won them over.

[628] And they were actually sympathetic, even though they did nothing about it, when I said, please can I have my children's phones and iPads back?

[629] Because what have they got to do with this?

[630] And there was a really touching moment.

[631] And it was horrible, actually, because I'm stood in a police station next to a kid.

[632] 19 -year -old kid, or younger, with, like, forensic sleeves on his arms.

[633] So those white forensic sleeves, he's covered in blood, this kid.

[634] And I'm stood next to him, and he's obviously just killed somebody.

[635] And I'm thinking, wow, we're being treated with the same level of seriousness by the law.

[636] So that gave me pause for thought.

[637] In terms of my family, I have a, my dad is, as I think I've sort of alluded to in this conversation with you, he was on this stuff in the, like, 1985, I think I was on that car journey when he was going.

[638] So he's sympathetic.

[639] He doesn't necessarily approve of my tactics.

[640] My one brother up is a beautiful and wonderful, stern brother, but he's really there for you when you need him.

[641] But he, again, is like not necessarily approving him my tactics.

[642] My sister and I, we disagree about everything.

[643] Our politics are completely different, and we get on like a house on fire.

[644] So it's like, how do you know about these things?

[645] And then the people that I really feel sorry for are my children, because, you know, a really well -known actor went up to my son at school because my little son goes to this, I mean, the most dreadful school that Britain has to offer by miles.

[646] It's just dreadful, full of celebrity, rich celebrities, very woke celebrities.

[647] They teach, it's all transgenderism.

[648] The whole thing is transgenderism.

[649] And this actor took it upon himself to go up to my son and tell him that his dad was a fascist.

[650] And that's...

[651] Oh, yeah, that's pleasant.

[652] How old is your son?

[653] It was 11 at that point.

[654] Oh, yeah, lovely, lovely.

[655] Yeah, yeah, that's great.

[656] Well, I guess.

[657] guess that guy picked on someone his own size, see?

[658] Yeah, so I, so that is difficult.

[659] But my kids, you know, the whole point of doing anything you ever do is for you and for your kids, you know, and you know, part of the, I think part of the process of meaning, full stop, is to remedy some of the things that, you know, it's to try and refine the mechanism of the family and all those sorts of things as you learn from your father and your mother the mistakes they made and you go well i'll try not to make that mistake so your life is constantly driven by meaning you're always trying to find meaning in it so therefore with with my kids they understand me and they get me and they and they and they know i am and i and i'm flattered and honored to be their parent and that that's how it is i mean is it is it difficult yes it's difficult but is it difficult to be sat in a situation in life where you had no choice no say and your life was ended like that.

[660] So I like these old truisms.

[661] I like these old these things that someone's got it worse than you.

[662] I like those things.

[663] I like sticks and stones may break my bones.

[664] I like that.

[665] I like all of these things because it reminds you that you are you are entrenched in a reality of your own making which isn't as bad as it could be.

[666] So be tough and be strong and love your and love as much you can.

[667] And how about your wife?

[668] How is she managed with all the disruptions in your career and you putting yourself and your family, well, in one way on the line?

[669] I mean, it's tricky, right?

[670] Because you're always putting your family on the line in one way or another.

[671] Like, there's no escape from that in life, you know?

[672] And so really what you do is you decide how you're going to lay things on the line.

[673] but often what people will do is take illusory short -term security in preference to actually addressing the issue at hand.

[674] And, I mean, you've suffered a dreadful amount of disruption, especially on the career front as a consequence of your political stances.

[675] And what's that done to your marriage?

[676] well my marriage ended in 2016 and she is a very interesting character who is using the we really need to have a look at the family court in the UK we're still arguing in family court weirdly whichever political case i have seems to work its way into a family court case at the at the same time which is different but my partner now, what my partner is, is still water, you know?

[677] She just, when I go, this is mad, it's too much, she just goes, it's okay, it's okay, you'll be right.

[678] Do you want to talk about it?

[679] She's still water and I'm fire, and that works for me. Oh, yeah.

[680] Because, as you said, you know, you've got a temper, I've got a real temper.

[681] Like yesterday when I was with my kids and I was saying, we've got to go and see Grandpa and everyone and they're like the car's going to come in four minutes and I'm ready and it's like, then the car arrives and no one's ready and you're just like, kids, come on, go!

[682] So my partner is she's the ice and the cooling to the fire that I can be sometimes.

[683] Right, well that's handy, that's handy.

[684] To have someone who can let you take a sober second thought.

[685] Yeah.

[686] So what are your plans?

[687] What are your plans?

[688] What are you doing now and what are your plans for the future?

[689] So now, how are you keeping body and soul together even?

[690] Well, it's really annoying.

[691] I had a neck operation.

[692] So I used to keep my body and soul together by exercising, but I had a neck operation and that stopped me from being able to exercise.

[693] So I need to work out a system of doing that.

[694] What I'm doing is I'm taking the government to court for non -contact child abuse of children in school via their transgender policies in the UK schooling in schools because it's disgusting what they're teaching our children and we've got we've put together a big case and we're going to take the Department of Education to court.

[695] I'm fighting the...

[696] Who's we?

[697] Who's we?

[698] So I started, I started not, once I realized that politics is fine, but it's not what people care about.

[699] People are going to vote red, they're going to vote blue, they're going to vote red, they're going to vote blue, they're going to swap one time or another.

[700] We thought, okay, what are the other things that we can do to change stuff?

[701] So we started up something called the Bad Lord Project, which is my team, which is a small team, it's about six, eight people, and I have two, I have a barrister and a solicitor within that team.

[702] And we are going to take the Department of Education to court to stop them teaching our kids this stuff.

[703] Because once we stop them teaching the kids this stuff, then what comes out of university is not going to be such a problem.

[704] We're fighting.

[705] We have an MP in Andrew Bridgen in North West Westchester who was kicked out of the Conservative Party for criticising their COVID vaccine rollout and saying that it did cause some problems.

[706] and then we do bits of media stuff as well, you know, just to sort of, you know, offer up some thoughts about life.

[707] So we try and look at it as a stall whereby we have legal, political and media.

[708] And I'll do that until I can't take it anymore.

[709] But at the moment, I'm sat totally desperate because I've walked out of my libel case two weeks ago and I'll get a judgment before Christmas.

[710] And it will be a very, very important judgment for the UK because the judge is being asked to define the meaning of the word racist, which is what I always wanted.

[711] I wanted someone to define this word, certainly in law, because we've got two versions of it.

[712] Even in the UK law, we have the Equal Treatment Bench Book, which defines the racist as pretty much everybody who has a bad thought about anybody.

[713] And this is judge's guidance.

[714] And then you've got the Oxford English Dictionary before it's turned into the Merriam -Webster Dictionary, which says racism is prejudice against someone based on the colour of their skin or their ethnicity.

[715] So I really want to work out, I've been called a racist, so I took someone to court, they took me to court, I took them to court, I'm waiting to hear it on a judgment on that.

[716] And I think that will be very, I think that will really matter to the people of Britain.

[717] So can you provide some more details about the nature of the case and what it is you're hoping to accomplish?

[718] and what you have at stake?

[719] Yeah, so in 2020, the big supermarket in the UK called Sainsbury's tweeted that they were going to provide, in the light of George Floyd's death, they were going to provide safe spaces for their black employees in their supermarket.

[720] To which I responded, that's proto -segregationism.

[721] are they not safe?

[722] Are they not safe in your supermarket?

[723] So then I was branded a racist by three people.

[724] One of them was in show business, was one of my colleagues in show business, and she said anyone who hires Lawrence Fox does certain analogies unequivocally, unapologetically and publicly a racist.

[725] So, I mean, that was a pretty, that was a death knell to my acting career.

[726] So I just swapped the word, I swapped the tweet round and I said anyone who hires Nicola Thorpe, which is her name, does so in the knowledge she's unequivocally, unapologetically and publicly a paedophile.

[727] And she then tweeted, she then sued me for defamation and I can't suit her for racism, which is what I wanted to do.

[728] So we just finished the court case in the last, we finished it a week ago on last Thursday, and we're expecting a judgment in the next short period.

[729] And it's going to be interesting because it'll mean for the person that, like you say, they always come for the smaller person.

[730] They don't come for the guy with a big profile.

[731] He's not going to arrest you at E -throw for criticizing his climate scan cameras, is he?

[732] He's going to arrest somebody else who's done it.

[733] So I'm trying to fight for the fact that you're not going to lose your job for criticizing diversity equity in inclusion, and you're not going to criticize, like you're not going to lose your job for criticizing so -called anti -racism, and you're not going to lose your job for complaining about the dilution of your culture.

[734] None of which is racist.

[735] It's just like a family.

[736] It's protecting your thing.

[737] So we'll see.

[738] I think it'll be quite a quite a...

[739] And is it done?

[740] Is it done except for the judgment?

[741] Eight days and I thought...

[742] How do you feel about your case?

[743] Are you optimistic, pessimistic?

[744] Can you say?

[745] all I can say is that I it's very very hard to lie in court and and when I I I didn't have to lie when I was in court I didn't have to tell a single lie that some of the examples were hilarious well that's one of the advantages of telling the truth is that when push comes to shove it makes your life a hell of a lot simpler well you're right well it's you know it's your it's your mantra which is a really good.

[746] It's a really good you know, I say it to my kids.

[747] I think people do and I think you've offered this to people which is like, you know, honesty is the best policy.

[748] It's another one of these truisms that people just forgot and replaced with no, Martin Luther King and so yesterday.

[749] It's like, no, no, these things really matter to people.

[750] So I sat and had my character dismantled by an activist barrister and I gave as good as I got.

[751] Mm -hmm.

[752] Okay, so you're feeling...

[753] I didn't lie.

[754] So you're feeling morally confident in your stance.

[755] And when do you find out?

[756] Well, I think the judgment may come down this Friday.

[757] And if it comes down this Friday, then it's good news for British people who, you know, don't want to be called racist just because they disagree with somebody about any issue at all.

[758] Now you can be called a racist.

[759] for disagreeing about climate change.

[760] But, you know, the other thing about England, and we were talking about it earlier, is this sort of stoic sense of patience that the Brits have.

[761] In the UK, if you call someone a racist, that's your job finished forever.

[762] That's it, it's gone.

[763] It means so much.

[764] And yet, to the people that throw the allegation around, it means nothing.

[765] So, you know, we have a problem there.

[766] And my enmity was, when I said that I would like to go for a beer with those guys, one of the people I didn't want to go for a beer with, because they were so possessed with, why are you asking me questions?

[767] You're a white supremacist.

[768] It's like, hang on a minute, a middle -class woman in a dock is accusing a middle -class man of being a racist.

[769] There's no black people or brown people anywhere near this court case.

[770] It's just white people walking around calling each other racist.

[771] So my job, my goal, if it's willed, is, to preserve the one thing that a man owns and my father taught me and my children will learn from me which is you have your good name and that's it that's it you got nothing else yeah well a huge a huge part of this culture war is the battle between true and false rights to a good name you know an immense part of what's driving the ally ship on the part of the radicals is the desire to enhance their reputation without having to do any of the productive work necessary to have a reputation and to substitute any and all other qualifications for genuine qualification.

[772] The president of Harvard has 11 publications to her name.

[773] Okay, so she was a tenured professor in the Ivy Leagues, first at Stanford, if I remember correctly, then a dean at Harvard, and then the president of Harvard.

[774] she isn't qualified enough to get a junior position at a mid -level state university in Canada or the U .S. Right, so in order for her to justify even the fact of her academic existence, she has to invent an entirely different structure of value to position herself as a contender for the occupations that were granted to her.

[775] It's an absolute bloody travesty.

[776] But so how do we put up with that?

[777] So I have a huge issue with this as well because the man who taught me English So my first interaction with the English language was from a man called Jeremy Lemon And he took he taught my father English He was that old He had been teaching at school And he taught me how to understand the English language And he taught it to me at a time When I was able to receive it, 13, really like able to and it gave me millions of pounds for my career.

[778] It earned me millions because I understood the language and how it works and what it was.

[779] And now I look at these, I look at some of the stuff my kids come home with and I look at some of the stuff and I just go, you're not learning anything.

[780] Like you're not learning anything.

[781] You're being told a lot of stuff, but you're not learning anything.

[782] Yeah.

[783] Well, you know, our, while my plan for that is my daughter and I are launching a new university enterprise, probably in February, we've got excellent professors delivering what I think will be the best quality lectures available, both technically and conceptually.

[784] I think, you know, this is an optimistic way of looking at it.

[785] You know, as the utopian globalist types, the ideologues, abandon everything of value, beauty, truth, justice, genuine merit, they leave it all on the table.

[786] And what that should mean is that other people can just come along and scoop it up and make use of it.

[787] And, I mean, again, that seems to be a more appropriate response than railing against the establishment.

[788] It's like, well, if they're doing such a bad job, maybe we can do a better job and invite people along.

[789] We had really quite a spectacular success with this art conference.

[790] I'll hear something cool.

[791] So we released the videos from the art conference.

[792] And within three weeks, we had four times as many views of our material as the W. had of what they released on YouTube over the last year.

[793] Good.

[794] So I think that, you know, and this speaks back to the conversation, partial conversation we had earlier about whether or not we could risk being optimistic, is that as those who oppose our culture abandon what's useful about it, that does free up the opportunity for other people to make use of it.

[795] And maybe there's infinite opportunity there.

[796] I mean, certainly, that's, look at what's happened on the social media side.

[797] I mean, as the legacy corporate media enterprises have become almost universally corrupt, there's been a massive opportunity for people like Joe Rogan who really do nothing but sit down and have an honest conversation.

[798] And so, you know, that's a pretty good deal.

[799] So, all right, well, look, I want to wish you good luck in your, lawsuits and your your pursuits, especially against the people in the education departments.

[800] I mean, I can't see any enterprise in the West that's become more corrupt than the education enterprise per se, right?

[801] K through 12, university, the whole bloody thing looks like it's done as far as I can tell.

[802] And maybe something spectacularly better will emerge as an alternative.

[803] It certainly could be the case.

[804] Be there, I'll be watching the progress of your court.

[805] cases with real interest, and maybe, I don't know exactly know when this will release, it'll probably be after the results of your libel case are made public.

[806] And so we'll update everybody on that.

[807] Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.

[808] I'm just going to let everybody know, too, I'm going to spend an extra half an hour, as I always do, talking to Lawrence on the DW Plus platform after this.

[809] And I'm going to walk through the details of life, which we didn't get to on this side of the conversation.

[810] So if all of you who are watching and listening want to join us over there, you're more than welcome to.

[811] And other than that, is there anything else you'd like to bring to the attention of people who are watching and listening before we close off this segment?

[812] Just to speak.

[813] If you don't speak, no one's going to hear you.

[814] Just speak.

[815] Yeah.

[816] If you have something to say, and it's grinding away.

[817] you probably time to say it even if you don't do it perfectly right right yeah all right mr fox pleasure talking to you and getting to know you a little bit better uh thank you to everybody watching and listening to the daily wear plus people for making this possible for coming up here to vancouver island which is where i am now a bit of a family um emergency up here and so thank you for to all those people for making this podcast possible and uh to everyone watching and listening Thanks for your time and attention, and we'll see you again in the relatively near future.

[818] Chavez, Fox, off to the Daily Wire Plus side.