The the dog whistle, which in psychology would be called mind reading, which is one of these things that you're supposed to not do if you want to be psychologically healthy. Well, they would certainly try and accuse me of being a racist. Now, I am sort of, you know, part Chinese and I'm half Jewish or Hispanic and. Yes, but but even so, yeah, they'll make those charges. So that it becomes normalized to be hyperbolic, about the right and the threat that it represents and the, the imminence of fascism. Hello and welcome to awake at the wheel. So in today's episode, we're going to revisit some themes surrounding cultural identity as well as ideological polarization, academic freedom, as well as the psychology of belief systems. We're going to do this today with our guest, Eric Kaufmann. So Eric is a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, as well as the director of the center for Heterodox Social Science. He also leads Buckingham's Ma in the politics of culture. Sorry, cultural conflict, which is a PhD track. Sorry, as well as a PhD track in cultural politics. Additionally, he is also the professor for an online course which is titled Woke Origins Dynamics as well as, implications. So welcome, Eric. Thanks for being with us today. Great to be here, Melanie. All right, so why don't you tell our viewers a little bit more about your professional background? Yeah. I've been I guess I have been an academic or since. Well, I guess over 25 years now. I did all my graduate work at the LSC and in Britain, even though I'm from Vancouver. So I did my undergraduate in Canada, but I did all of my graduate work in, in the UK, focusing very much in the broad field of nationalism. And within that, the question of dominant or majority ethnicity, in relationship to population changes, typically around immigration and focusing on initially North America, that sort of a lot of the background in terms of my first book, which was really about the decline of the Anglo Protestant majority in the U.S. in sort of starting from the late 19th century, but going through to the mid, mid to late 20th century. And then, but but in that book, I certainly looked a fair bit at the question of cultural left liberalism. So I've had a, a longstanding interest in sort of three pillars, one of which is this question of dominant ethnicity or ethnic majorities. The other is the politics of population change. And the third is the question of the cultural left, not the Marxist left, but the, if you like, almost the cultural liberal left. From the 19th century onward. And those themes kind of continue not through all my books. So I did do a book on, you know, the Demography of religion, which was much more about, proselytizing religions and, and demography. Where the the question of whether, religious people are due to higher birth rates likely to form a larger share of the population. Now, that did engage my interest in political demography, but I also did a co-edited book with a number of authors, including Jack Goldstone, of George Mason. On this question of political demography, how population changes affect politics. And then I did more recently, I have a book on, White Shift, which is really analyzing the rise of national populism in the sort of post 2014 period. But but I what I would say is I didn't I'm not just a Johnny come lately to this that that my first book back in which was kind of written as, as an extension of my PhD in the late 90s, was already basically focusing on the same issues. And so it's something that I've been looking at for a long time. And then my most recent book, which was entitled, the sort of locating in North America, taboo in Britain that book was really about this question. Again, getting back again, I wouldn't say this is a brand new interest. Going back to my first book, the interest in the cultural liberal left and how it's evolving and evolved over time. So that was kind of the backdrop. The origin of woke is really about tracing those ideas into what I argued was more cultural, left liberalism rather than cultural Marxism, and then sort of moving forward to look at the public opinion and politics, because I've gone in a more quantitative, survey data direction, say, for the last ten, 15 years. So I've kind of brought a lot of that quantitative social science into the book as well. So this topic of wokeness, I don't want to presume here, but just my familiarity with your work is, kind of dictating my question here so that with the topic of wokeness, I imagine it went from being an area of academic and professional focus to maybe more of a personal interest or personal pursuit. Am I correct in that assumption? Yeah. I mean, I think the interest came first, which is probably what led to, you know, the trouble I was having from radical activists in my university. So because I was a critic of the social so called social justice movement. Now, the only reason I'm a critic is because I was obviously interested in it. And writing about it critically. But that then led to clearly my run ins with, campaigns orchestrated by radical staff and students, starting around 2018. Can you talk a bit more about those run ins? Yeah. So really, I'm trying to think how it all began. I mean, the I was sort of critical. I mean, I guess there was a sort of very old tweet where I was criticizing Black Lives Matter, but it was more kind of a, a series of things. It was all to do with social media because, you know, radical activists, they don't read books, they don't read articles, so they will read however, social media posts. And I wasn't look, I fair. You know, I was on Twitter, I was on social media and I was criticizing, you know, something even like retweeting a video of Justin Trudeau not being able to say LGBTQ, that is, is enough to go on a file of complaint. Right? So you then the allege those who make the complaint. So I had a number of formal complaints put in, some by outsiders, one by 1 or 2 by radical staff members claiming I violated university policy by what I was tweeting. And so that's kind of the way these arguments go. It's like, well, he's a is you know, the policy says you must uphold a respectful environment. And by tweeting this, it's it's not respectful and brings the university into disrepute and all these kind of and it kind of shows you the way this works is that illiberal policies, which actually are a violation of academic freedom, are come to be embedded into the university administrative structure. They don't think about the implications of that. And then the activists will leverage the wording of those policies to try and get you in trouble. You'll then be hauled into these kind of kangaroo courts, which, again, people are interested in adjudicating, which tend to be activists, will tend to be self-selecting into these adjudicating bodies. And so some of the claims really are just staggering. So what actually happens is you just have to have the guts to appeal it up and get legal, because once you get legal, the claims no longer have to have force. But up until that point, they can intimidate you, you know, and and I should also say there were, you know, like there was the annual Twitter mobbing where they tried to organize, you know, this guy has to Birkbeck has to get this guy out because, you know, he's awful and then awful racist or whatever it is, or homophobia or whatever it is, they would orchestrate that once a year. I think I got one open letter. So, yeah, this is sort of the kind of tactics that I faced. And it is a small number of people who do it. You know, the other thing I would say is that this was starting in 2018, I could feel the energy of this movement starting to wane around like 2021. So the annual Twitter mobbing from the radical student societies started to get ratio. You know, there were many more people opposing what they had to say. They got no support in the press. The press was very opposed. And so really, they were kind of losing energy. And I could feel that energy slipping away as we got into 2022. Now these complaints were still being made. But then by that time we had the Free Speech Union, which I could get a letter from, and that was more or less and these, these investigations. But but the whole thing. Yeah, I would say that it was a good object lesson in how cancel culture operates. And I could sort of see this. But now this wasn't coming from my colleagues who had known for a long time. But what was interesting to me is, you know, two thirds of my colleagues were in the union. The union is completely radical. And I think at some point the union told them they had to sign on to a complaint. So they they managed to get ten out of 15 names onto this complaint, but it was recycling the same stuff that they'd used in previous complaints, that were orchestrated by the radicals. So, I mean, I think it is quite kind of because I'm quite interested in, you know, how who's driving all of this. And I'm very, I'm very sure that those ten colleagues were not driving it. Even if they signed up to it, maybe, perhaps because the union told them they had to. I don't know what, but it really comes from a small number of very committed activists who who can leverage. But but the other part of it is that they can leverage a couple of things. One is the H.R. language of policies, administrative policies. And two, a certain level of sympathy amongst the left liberal majority within academia. So they can kind of push on that to a certain degree. And, and they will get some support from that. So, yeah, I think I sort of had a, an up close and personal anthropology of, of cancel culture. So in the midst of all of that and, I imagine the attacks on you as an academic and as a professor and as professional, was there ever a point where you questioned your stance on things or reconsidered your stance on anything, or were you able to stand firm throughout? I just think probably I was too much of a you know, the thing is, I probably was somewhat concealing my views in the past. And then at some point I just decided, well, I'm of a certain age and I've been a full professor for at least seven, eight, nine years. And yeah, you just sort of reach a point where you say, well, actually, I'm not going to play this game anymore. And I think once you take that step and cross that Rubicon, I don't think you can you can withdraw. And I think it's hard to explain why. But once you've taken that step, you're in it. You're in it for the long haul. And I don't think I mean, it's not to say that I wouldn't in the early stages. I probably might have, you know, like, I, you know, the first time I apologized, which was a mistake, but so, so that but then after a while, once you're on this road, I think you're on this road and eventually you're just going to say, well, the hell with it, right? And so, but but I guess also knowing that there are going to be costs to that in terms of your relations with other people in these settings, even if they don't personally disagree with you, they have to keep their distance. And so that's the other part of business, the awkwardness that this creates, once you've been in the press and these fights have been in the press and they all know about it, then you're a bit radioactive, which is, of course, one of the one of the strengths of cancel culture movement is they can make you radioactive, even to people who you've known for a long time, and even to people who may actually think that you've got a point, just socially and from an optics point of view, they'll, they'll want to kind of, yeah, keep away perhaps. So it's, it's extraordinarily effective. I think this whole idea of radioactivity that that once you've transgressed the sacred, which is you have in some way offended totemic groups, as Musa al-Gharbi uses the term, you know, you starkly marginalize race, gender, sexual minorities, which are the sacred totems in the system once you are seen to have in any way. And however marginally offended that such groups then you are a blasphemer and you're on the other side of the sacred profane line. So you're radioactive. And that means nobody can have anything to do with you, right? Or else they will be guilty by association. And so it's very powerful and very powerful social mechanism. And what did you do to offend those groups? Well, critics criticizing the social justice movement. Right. So if I'm retweeting something like if I'm retweeting Justin Trudeau, not being able to pronounce LGBTQ, the implication, therefore, that they want to draw is like this guy's homophobe, Beck or transphobic or something. I mean, which is of course ridiculous in the sense that, you know, these movements, which I would argue are making sacred, making these groups sacred, and therefore shutting down anything which might be seen as offensive to such groups. In my view, it's fair game to go after them. And but in the view of the cancellers they would always try and pin on to you this label of, oh, you are, you know, racist, homophobic or whatever, simply, you know, indirectly through the fact you're criticizing movements that are meant to help these groups. So it's a very effective strategy in that it shuts down a lot of opposition to cultural left ideology, by extension, to because they are connected to the sacred totem, totemic groups, you can't criticize them. And then by the same token, any policies, if you criticize policies that whose intent is supposedly to help groups, even if it might harm those groups, you know, defund the police or, you know, if you are a skeptic of high immigration levels, the view would be, well, that's offensive to racial minority groups, because most people who are citizens are white, most, most immigrants are nonwhite. Therefore, by implication, you're a racist. You see, this is the kind of, second order expanse of logic that is used to shut down any criticism of, of and simply by saying that this, by extension, is offensive to such groups, even if it isn't actually offensive, you know, you know, even if, you know, like a good example is the term Latinx, right? If you criticize term Latinx, at one time, you know, that would be could is that offensive to Latinos? Well, most Latinos can't stand that term. Right. But it doesn't matter. It's just that you have transgressed because your intent, they're always impute your intent out of your criticism of the social justice movement. So yeah, I would say that is sort of it all stems from that and from the fact I was an early critic of this movement and people would say, well, then by extension, you must be a fill in the blank phobe, right? Yeah. Okay. And to your point, I always make the point that, to use the terminology of the liberals, I have many areas of intersectionality, of diversity, and I always take issue with being told what should offend me because of those areas of diversity. It's very, very strange. Yeah. And it, it is, it's, it's almost like you know if you say something which could be interpreted as you can imagine in, in a pure, in the Puritan days, for example, or in a very pious society, if you said something that might in theory imply that you don't believe in God or the divinity, the divinity of Jesus or something, right? And then then you would be tagged as having profaned the sacred or insulted God or something. I mean, it's it's quite similar in the sense that all it takes is an entrepreneur or what Cass Sunstein would call an I don't think he calls it an outrage entrepreneur, but people who will be pushing the boundaries of the sacred and to to expand and inflate what constitutes a violation of the sacred in order to, to gain a certain amount of cultural power and cultural capital by accusing somebody of blasphemy? It's kind of like the purity spiral the witch hunt phenomenon is, is you get these individuals who feel a sense of virtue by pointing the finger at the impious. And when you have these sacred values, I mean, that's always possible in a society. And it kind of stems from there. So even, you know, offending the most hypothetically sensitive member of a historically marginalized group would be enough to get you could be enough to get you cancelled. Yeah. And Malini have used the religious analogy many times because that's really, I mean what you just described can you know be applied to so many cases of these attempted or actual cancellations. Right. And as it was said, the day after Charlie Kirk's assassination, I was on the radio and we took an a caller and you were saying, well, you know, Charlie Kirk’s this racist Bob, and he's going on and on, and I just had to I said, say, name one thing that Charlie Kirk has actually said that's objectively racist. And the caller's response was, well, these are dog whistle. These are, you know, and I said, I said, I said, yeah, it relies. So when you talk about how to expand the definition of offensive or blasphemy or anything when it comes down to, well, we can read the person's mind, even if they disavow it, we can infer their, you know, we can conclude their intent, right? And motivation. Right. So yeah, that's such a good point. The the dog whistle, which in psychology would be called mind reading, which is one of these things that you're supposed to not do if you want to be psychologically healthy. But yeah, getting away from the principle of charity, taking the best interpretation to taking the worst interpretation, and then basing everything on that, you know, that's one of the sort of rhetorical strategies that you see all the time. Right? And, yeah, I that that does seem to be central to this movement, but but equally, I think the attempt, you know, to push the boundaries of the sacred and to, to to expand the meaning of racism, for example, to include so-called microaggressions, you know, where are you from? Or, if you say, you know, anybody can make it in Canada, you know, you're denying systemic racism and, you know, this, this sort of expansion of what counts as, and or raising an eyebrow was one that was, you know, in a manual. I think it was in Oxford. I can't remember where this was. That apparently raising an eyebrow at a person of color was was a form of microaggression. So, yeah, I mean, I noticed, I think going beyond this, was this, that Hispanic, construction worker or worker for the gas company in the States that was cracking his knuckles and someone snapped a picture of him and it looked like the okay symbol. I remember that his hand outside. And guy got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So ridiculous. So, you know, and with the work that you do and you're looking at like demographic demographic shifts and you're talking about the impact of religious in birth rates and so on and migration. I mean, that just makes it so easy for someone to say, well, you are a white nationalist and so on and so on. So, I mean, how much how far have any complaints against you gone as far as those, you know, damning complaints or allegations? Well, the thing is that none of these people read books, so they not it's not like they've read a book or actually, you know, it's all stuff from social media which those those things are all around criticism of the social justice movement. I'm trying to think what else that I there have been some. Oh yeah. So yeah, I mean I again one thing was I was review Douglas Murray's book in the Financial Times and there was this phrase, and really he's talking about wokeness basically, and saying that, I think it was the madness of crowds that I was reviewing. And I said, you know, we need to slay this dragon. So, so Murray had used the term, you know, slaying the dragon for a movement. Maybe he was talking about the gay rights movement where they've run out of dragons to slay, and so they're just waving their sword around, and, and so that's sort of what I was using, using that metaphor in the, in the review. And I was accused of having a particular staff member in mind when I, when I wrote that, and therefore I had kind of almost murderous intent toward a staff member. I mean, it was incredible stuff. Really incredible stuff. But yeah, but no, I think this other there's the question about demography, though, and, ethnic shifts. Interestingly, that's not really been the focus of the cancellers and I kind of thought, like in the book White Shift, I start actually, the reviews were pretty good. I mean, Los Angeles Times and I was on Ezra Klein. And I think the overall I don't think that was a source of much controversy. You know, and also, it's worth saying that I'm, you know, I what I'm saying is that the, you know, the rise of the populist right is very much related to ethnic shifts in immigration. I wasn't sort of saying that, you know, countries should somehow go white nationalist. I was sort of arguing that that in a way, if the argument, if there was a policy prescription was more that you need to calibrate assimilation and immigration, you have to have a kind of balance between those two, forces. So and I was kind of talking about white majorities and how, you know, you're going to get an admixture over time. Through assimilation into these majority groups. And that's kind of the future that, you know, there's a kind of it's kind of the Michael in Beijing argument that these majorities are going to kind of beige over time, but they will retain, you know, their mythos, symbolic cores. So, so, so I don't think that was especially controversial. I don't think the book was especially controversial. So, I think in actually, interestingly, you know, pointing out that the cultural side, the, the cultural psychological, is really the driver of the rise of the populist right, was quite congenial to somebody like Ezra Klein, who was making the same argument and running up against certain critics on the right who would say, no, this is all about economics and the left behind, a kind of Steve Bannon arguments, which if you look at the data, if you do any data analysis, I think was pretty thin. And so I think that was I don't think any of that was actually particularly controversial. People might take issue, but I think that the, the weight of the evidence is, is pretty substantial, that that this is not an economic class based movement, even though sometimes that's used to legitimated. I don't think that's really the driver of okay. But your your answer in it was full of, nuance and evidence, which, you know, when you're, when the pitchforks are coming, evidence and nuance are not part of the mob. Right. So I'm just surprised you escaped that unscathed. I thought that would be just, again, just perfect for, for them attacking you. You know, as, again, as a white nationalist. So I'm surprised. Yeah. Well, they would certainly try and accuse me of being a racist. Now, I am sort of, you know, part Chinese and I'm half Jewish or Hispanic and. Yes, but but even so, yeah, they'll make those charges. But I don't that's not really the that is not really the source of the the source of the cancellation news is really always revolved around you've offended these minority groups and therefore it's an unsafe classroom environment for these students. That's sort of always been the attack line from people pursuing these investigations rather than he's a, you know, white nationalist who believes in and, you know, white supremacy, whatever. On that point, though, if I can interject yours, I, I think that if I were to say the exact same things that you said, I don't know if I would come, across those same accusations. So I, I think there is some element of them making assumptions about you for being a white man. Definitely. Absolutely. Although, yeah, I think you're right. I think it would be interesting if I was visibly nonwhite. I it's a hard one, actually. I know, I don't know for sure, but I'm basing it on I feel that I have more license to say things. I'm a brown woman who is blind, so people tend to stay away from me because, you know, I, I fall into those categories, whereas I don't think you have the same license that I do. I think that's that's absolutely correct. I think, you know, undoubtedly that does give someone more license and would make it harder for them to target you. And yeah, I think they would try and paint me in those colors right as saying, here's a white guy who's a white nationalist, but in terms of the evidence that they would marshal for these investigations, it's focused very much on harm to specific groups. Right. Rather than, this guy is in league with Nick Fuentes or, you know, cam who. Great. Where it's not been that line of attack. Now I have seen that line of attack on in other cancellation cases. You know, the Caitlin Ford case in Alberta, that was the attack line. There was like, oh, she's saying stuff that sounds like, you know, the Great replacement. And so that could be, in theory, a line of attack that's just not really the one that I got. But it could well have been I guess they could have probably, if they of course, they don't read books, and if they had read the book or read some more in-depth things, maybe they could have plucked out a few sentences and stitched them together in certain ways to to go after mean that. But I think that's a harder one. You know, in a university context, if you advocate for the Great replacement, it's a bit abstract, like, you know, as opposed to you've you offended group X, y, Z and created a hostile environment for those groups. That's that is the sort of better way to play it. I guess, if you're trying to get somebody out of a job and that's probably the cleaner way to go. Okay, so, so but with that angle of attack, then the, you know, you've offended someone, right? How have you I mean, because you're, you are relying on evidence, which I said, you know, it doesn't seem to hold much weight. And when you're being attacked by these people, but, like what what has basically kept you, safe from from the mobs. Is it just the evidence again? Is someone saying you've offended this particular group? It doesn't matter what your intent is, they're offended. How do you defend against that? Well, you you you can't defend. You can't defend against. Like, if somebody is offended because I, retweeted that Justin Trudeau tweet or criticized Black Lives Matter. I can't really defend against, you know, I can't get inside the head of, of this individual. But I think even the kangaroo court would understand that just proving offense. I mean, even these clowns at the at the lower level, would understand that's a bit thin. So I would say even though they are ideologically biased and they have and they make some outlandish claims like that one about slaying the dragon I there is there is also a sense in which, okay, they have to at least sound a bit legal, you know, so they have to at least kind of make a case. And so I think just saying someone was offended, they would have to say, you know, you violated this policy, therefore, by creating a hostile environment and not respecting. And so I guess that that standard is a little bit higher. And even even people who are ideologues, probably at least in that formal setting of a university hearing, would have to try and adhere to quasi legal, not legal, but quasi legal sounding language. So I think it's probably a little thing just to say you've offended, but they have to try and sort of gin it up into something that is a hostile environment. You're creating a, a terrible environment. Somebody is at work and study in the university. So so this is kind of where, they would have to go with it. So offense is on its own. Probably wouldn't be enough. Okay. Did they do they, was there any form of, like, verbal reprimand? Do they give you suggestions to tone it down? Like what was the outcome? Oh yes. So so definitely the way these will they'll play out and they'll say, you know, you've been found guilty. You know, they will say you violated the policy. But but they won't actually it'll be more like a, you know, you've got this warning now in theory they could give you there are these technical level. So they could give you the kind of warning which is like, this is your last chance. And and I can't remember if I got one of those or not, but they want the, the because they then have to make this. It does take on a quasi legal coloring because I had representation with me shortly after the first hearing. And therefore I think they're aware that, if they make a charge, it's potentially legally actionable. And so when it came down to handing out the sentence, that was always very vague. It was more like, you're you're guilty. And this is a warning. That's the way they play it. Now, if when you appeal it up, I like obviously they didn't say you've lost any privileges, so I didn't get any concrete penalties, but if I'd appealed that up, it would then they would then be a legal angle. So I did appeal on one occasion. I did appeal it up to the top of the institution and at the top of the institution. People are actually saner because they have legal counsel. They have, you know, they have to be aware of lawsuits and all of this. And so that is when these things will tend to more or less be set aside because they realize that they don't have a legal leg to stand on. I. And but as long as they can keep it below the top and keep it at the level of scaring you and you aren't going legal on them, so you always should go legal almost immediately. If you get any of these and you can't trust your unions, obviously I don't. That goes without saying. The unions are on the side of the cancellers and you need to have outside unions So in Britain, the free speech union, and in Canada now there's the free speech union Canada. I think that's who I would trust if I was on the hot seat. So I sense, Eric that you manage to not take this personally. So I guess my question is twofold. What do you think is the biggest misunderstood thing that folks have about you that's finding you in these situations? And how do you manage to not take it personally? Well, I wouldn't say I don't take it personally in the sense the people who accuse me, I very much do take it personally. And I did find the university disappointing, although I guess I knew that the top levels were more sane, and I always knew that, so I didn't. I don't blame those people, but I do. I do blame the sort of activists and some of their I mean, I can understand to some degree, to some degree, the lower levels of the administration. I mean, they they have these policies which probably have been pushed partly in response to the regulatory environment with the 2010 Equality Act in Britain. Maybe that's when these things were adopted by H.R.. Or perhaps the DEI committees pushed the agenda, and then they adopted it after the DTI committees, reported, you know, I do blame those procedures. I guess the, the particular individual who happens to be, let's say, the dean of the faculty, I do understand that they're in that position where they're being impinged upon by a number of different forces. And so it's harder necessary. I still did take it somewhat personally with that individual, but I didn't really. I could also see that they were under certain kinds of pressures, institutionally. So it's really hard necessarily to blame them. But yeah. But I did certainly. Yeah. And, and certainly when 10 or 15 of my colleagues signed on to a complaint letter, I did kind of take that personally, even though I also knew just from the content of the complaint letter that it was recycled and that they'd been had pressure put on them by their union. You know, so it's a it's a tough one. I mean, I take it somewhat personally, I don't take it extremely personally from those people. Yeah. And I guess the follow up to that was, what do you think people are misunderstanding about you and your stance and what you talk about? Yeah, I think well, that's a good question. So what what are they not understanding? Well, again, I would always try and draw a line between criticism of the social justice movement and criticism of the, objects of empathy, of the social justice movement that is, you know, you even take something like defund the police, right? Defund the police, cost thousands of black lives. Like, if you actually cared about black lives, would you support something like defund the police? So, so in a way, you have to sort of I and I most people don't have a problem. It's only a small number of progressive individuals that actually make these equations that that if you criticize the social justice movement, you must be criticizing, historically marginalized groups, right? That most people aren't going to think that. But I think understanding the difference between those two things, like, I'm a very strong critic of the so-called social justice movement. I'm not a strong critic of historically, historically marginalized groups who I think would be helped more by, a focus on resilience rather than fragility. And de-emphasis on fragility and in fact, you just have to look at the outpouring of books from the likes of John McWhorter and Coleman use and a lot of, say, certainly black intellectuals who been saying these policies have been failing us for 60 years. Affirmative action is failing us by mis allocating black students into into environments they're not suited for, and therefore they drop out. They don't become scientists and they don't. Their earning power is is affected. Or education. If you don't separate the bad apples or criminalize the bad apples, then you can't allow others to flourish in those communities. So yeah, I think there's a you know, there are enough. And certainly there are many obviously gay and lesbian, anti-woke writers. There are many black anti-woke writers. And so it's obviously a very strong, social justice criticism coming from minority groups. Now, that's that's not going to register with a social justice warrior, but I think it will register with the 90% of the public that are not in those, fervid environments. Okay. And just one side note, because when you mentioned about, you know, the negative impact, the unintended consequence may be, you know, the civil rights movement or, you know, die programs and so on. Right. I mean, I, I just put something the other day, I mean, Charlie Kirk, who talked about that, and he was talk he was using DEI He was talking facts like he was saying like, you know, this is what has happened in the 60 years since. And that all over social media got post says he doesn't like black people. He's this this guy. So, you know, so ugly the distortions that were made of his words, which if you step back and heard me go, okay, there seems to be some merit in that. Let's look at the evidence. Yet he was tarnished, you know, as a racist, for those same words. So, you know. Because, look, I think and this really all goes back to. Yeah, Shelby Steele's book work on white guilt. You know, he noticed that after the what happens with the civil rights movement, which is, of course, very important, very necessary, and leads to equal treatment. It very quickly steps from equal treatment into equal outcomes and the need to discriminate in order to achieve equal outcomes. And it tips over. Also, once you have this norm against racism, it's not just a norm that's proportionate, and nuanced. It's it's a very black and white you cross the line, you're canceled. Very much a taboo. That was the character of the anti-racist norm that came in. It very much came in like, you know, you are if you if you cross a line which is very arbitrarily defined, it's a one strike, you're out, you're a pariah situation. And so it became a sort of radioactive zone. And you if you if you got any of that radioactivity on you, you became radioactive. And so that kind of totalizing, what that creates is a very totalizing world in which there's black and there's white and it's very easy to accuse you. It's much harder to to get the radioactivity off you then to, to get it attached to you in the first place. And so it's very easy for people to accuse Kirk of being, you know, a racist than it is for him to disavow that and say, I'm not a racist, right? I mean, it's wrong, but, and, you know, obviously there are still, you know, there are real racist things that that can be said and that people say, so that's, that is goes without saying. But the, the inflation of this concept, that's taken place, under the influence of, I would argue the cultural left has moved in this direction. You know, you look at the term microaggression, you there's, there's work on, by Nick Haslam, the psychologist on this idea of concept Greek prejudice, trauma, bullying, all of these words which used to mean something more specific in, you know, psychotherapy. You know, the meaning of that is expanded greatly. And it's not an accident that, sort of psychotherapy and mental health industry has seen a, a any expansion in the meaning of all its terms and the medicalization of mental health can augment medicalization of personality extremes that would not the right mental illnesses and have this and that therapeutic culture very much has influenced, the cultural left so that they're taking on board all of these extensions and expansions, extensions and expansions and applying them politically. And this is where it becomes so easy to call somebody a racist. And for that to stick and for people to then think that that's radioactive, it's dishonest. But but part of it is because we are in a victimhood culture, as Manning and Campbell, describe it in their books. You know, the victimhood culture which is taken over from the more, resilient culture that was there before. The presumption is always against the accused. In these situations when you're talking about the sacred groups. And so until we fix that problem, until we I think we have to decenter and decentralize these particular groups and move away from a, a victim, a culture to a culture that expects more resilience, that takes a more charitable view of peoples. And you should start with the most charitable, interpretation of a person's words. And then if if there's a pattern of behavior over a long period of time that's credible, then you can move towards a more suspicious approach, to mind reading. But I would say that, you know, we've really lost the the what, what Campbell and Manning call the dignity culture based on resilience, has really given way to the victimhood culture. And as long as that's the case and that's dominant, they have the cultural power, because they have the cultural power in the institutions, they can establish norms. They can say, okay, the new word is Latinx. You must all, you know, use that term or, you know, and everyone has to use that term, to get to fall into line, because it's a bit like if you have political power, you establish the laws. If you have cultural power, you establish norms. And the cultural left has acquired that power. And until that can be moderated, I think we're always at risk at this. Well, yeah. In addition to the laws and the power, the other, I think that you've you've alluded to numerous times is the language when they have control of the language, you know, and George Orwell two spoke, wrote about that. So, you know, eloquently, you know, about the distortion and manipulation of language. I think that's what we really are seeing. Number one in the number two, there's so many stakes, there's our heads on the stakes of people who, you know, I've gone through. So every time we we speak to somebody who has, you know, you guys had the mobs, you know, Sicked on them yet have still come out, you know, maybe somewhat unscathed or not, but they do come out and survive. Okay. Like that's what I hope that's one head off of the stakes, because there are so many on there that people see that they won't even touch it because the cost is too great. Why stick my head out is, you know what most people are thinking. Yeah, yeah. And I think also part of this too is, you know, this label fascist or racist. You know, there's a there's a long Orwell wrote and I hadn't remembered this until Andrew Doyle brought it up. But Orwell wrote about misuse of the term fascism. Essentially, it just means it came to mean somebody who was a bully or something, or who said something that that was obnoxious. Even in Orwell's day, that term, you know, and I think you can track it. You know, I've tracked it to the late 30s now. It's it's I can excuse it, you know, in the late 30s that were real fascists doing really awful things. Okay, I can I can excuse a little excitability there from the left. But but as we get into the second postwar era, that reflex really doesn't go away. It's it's so, you know, you heard of the term Red scare. There been, like, McCarthyism as a form of red scare, that everyone's a communist and they're hiding under the bed. But this idea of fascist scare, which I come up with, that everyone's a fascist. And, you know, if you if you stop being vigilant and you give them an inch, they'll take a mile and we'll be back to 1933. Germany. That is a sort of very well accepted, trope in, in mainstream discourse that you don't really have to defend to justify being, engaging in fascist scare the way Kirk for example, was routinely described is is an example of that fascist scare. So I think that's what that whole fascist scare reflex. And even if you think about the way in which, you know, communist atrocities versus fascist atrocities, the way those are processed in Western culture is very different. There's much more of a taboo, obviously, around the fascist stuff. And, you know, I by no means want to defend, you know, those people. That is a risk, no doubt. But, the specter of fascism and the way that that is weaponized is, is something that's been going on for a long time without criticism. And I do think we need to apply much more critical law. If you look at the, you know, there was a paper that David Rosato, and I and I did where he looked at the mentions of terms like extreme, extreme right, far right, hard right, you know, fascist, right. All of these kind of, let's just say emotionally extreme description prefixes for the term conservative or. Right. And then you look at the same for left or progressive, in the newspaper starting in 2010, you see this huge spike in the number of times where the word extreme right, far right, radical right, fascist right, etc. is used, and only a very modest rise in the use of the term extreme left, radical left, etc.. So that it becomes normalized to be hyperbolic, about the right and the threat that it represents and the, the imminence of fascism. That just becomes kind of a, an accepted trope. And the idea is that, yeah, we've got to be super alarmist about anything the right does if they have a protest. That's tantamount to fascism. If the left has a protest and a riot, that's just, you know, letting off some steam that this sort of double standard very much exists in part because, you know, we haven't yet, as a society, properly applied a critical lens to, catastrophism about the right. And I think that undoubtedly is a factor in, in the environment behind Kirk's murder. I think that that level of catastrophizing, alarmism around fascism, attaching that label to anything on the right, creates. Yeah, it creates a certain structure, which certainly I would say was a motivation for this killer. So along those same lines, Eric, what do you think the left and right have wrong about one another? Well, I think and and actually we, we have survey dead on the I'm a survey guy. Right. But you can see that the left has preconceptions about the right. So they will say, you know, people on you know, if you how many Democrats in America think that Republicans, you know, a lot of Democrats think most Republicans think racism is fixed and there's no racism in America. Which is not the case. You know, most Republicans would say, yeah, there is and equally on the right, people would say, you know, Democrats hate the US. They're not patriotic. And that's actually not true either. So there's there are these misconceptions. I think, you know, you've got extremes and you've got the middle class. As with anything else. So most, center left individuals oppose cancel culture. I don't think most people on the right appreciate that. So there's a very big difference between, the white hot cancel culture activist left and the broader swath of left wing voters. For example, the center left is very different from the far left on cancel culture. In terms of the right, the number of, people on the right, even populist right voters, the number of people who say that you have to be white to be British or American or French or anything like that, is generally under 10%. And the opposition to interracial marriages at a similar level. So there's actually extremely limited support for, you know, some of these expressions, for example, white nationalism, deportation of nonwhite citizens, that is, we're talking single digit support, that tends to be extended to, like all Republican voters, all eight, Reform Party voters in Britain or National Rassemblement national supporters in France. So there's a big misconception over, you know, the distance between the extreme online and, voting blocs, even populist, right? Voting blocs is enormous. And I don't think the left appreciates that. They think, you know, if you want less immigration, you must be in favor of ethnic cleansing. You know, the line between these things, the distance is enormous in public opinion terms. But in the minds of particularly politically active members of the left, I think that that line doesn't exist. They just exclude these things. There's a lot of nuance. There are a lot of people who want, to reduce, you know, the reduced the level of immigration to allow deeper assimilation. That is a I would say that is a very common view amongst populist right supporters. They might they want to deport illegal immigrants. That is probably also common view amongst populist right supporters. But beside the line between deporting illegal immigrants and deporting, you know, minority citizens, that's an enormous gap. In, in the minds of the voting public. But in the mind of, political activists on the left, there's no difference. They're just ones the same as the other, you know? So, yeah, these are just some of the misconceptions. I think we need to get to one nuanced place. I always say, say, on the immigration issue, it's it's a it's a sort of shades of gray. It's faster, slower, not open close. And many activists on the left want to make it about open. Closed. You're either open which almost moves towards open borders. You're either open or you are closed person. And if you're a closed person, you're a threat. Right. And that totalizing kind of binary view of the world, I think needs to give way to a more nuanced, hey, there's people who want slower change, a faster change, and that should be a legitimate subject of debate in an advanced society. And I don't think we're there yet. Okay, so to that point, my name is asking about misconceptions on both sides. So here's one thing. And I we don't have that much time, but I'll squeeze in if you don't think can give a proper answer, let me know. But, I saw, you were on a podcast with Ryan Rogers. I did a podcast as well, and I didn't see the video yet, but I saw his interest is sort of like the, what's it called? The trailer, so to speak. And he said that, you know, basically that, that people have a misconception about what woke is and that you were going to explain what that misconception was. Now, I know if that was clickbait or if that wasn't accurate, if there's something that you got that people really misunderstand about woke, because we talk a lot about the Wokeism Yeah. I mean, and woke. I always sort of do the one sentence, one sentence definition. They, you know, making sacred of historically marginalized race, gendered sexual minority groups is what woke use and the belief system that comes out of that is you want equal outcomes and emotional harm protection for those groups. My, my are you know, what we discussed about was the Chris Rufo, James Lindsay. And not only that, probably Francis Fukuyama and Yasha monk. There's a lot of emphasis on the high intellectual ism of the post Marxist left. So this almost cultural Marxist argument that, they took out the cartridge of class from the oppressor oppressed console and they stuck the identity cartridge in. Now, my my answer is that to that is that yes, that did occur. And you can trace it as Rufo does. You know, Angela Davis is a link from the Black Panthers to BLM, and that's all true. But the emphasis in my book is much more on this idea that there is this tissue of public morality in the West, which is a post-Christian public morality based around what Jonathan Haidt would call the care, harm, inequality, moral foundations. So humanitarian, egalitarian, being nice, being kind, but being kind, really, to those who are more or less fortunate in some way that that sort of post-Christian, moral, found sort of post-Christian public morality exists in the West and, and that sort of left liberalism, which is really the, you know, this is really much more something that informs social democracy and left liberalism than communism. So I think the focus on Marxism and communism is one important, I don't think is the main storyline. So I place much more emphasis on the soft left and left liberalism. And I argue that what woke is, is more a radicalization of an underlying tissue of public morality, which is based in more in this liberal left or humanitarian left, and of course, anyone who's read Marx knows he was scathing in his criticism of that kind of person. And so I think and, and that's sort of partly to understand that the role of humanitarian psychotherapy that, that what dryer calls therapeutic totalitarianism, it's that idea of you've hurt somebody's self-esteem. You've you've emotionally traumatized them. You microaggression. All of that stuff has nothing. There is no source and cultural Marxism for that. I don't think you can. And likewise, I think you can look at affirmative action. You can look at speech codes, political correctness around language. None of that stuff really has a root in the more critical theory based argument. So it does. Somebody say, well, you shouldn't use a microaggression because that upholds a structure of oppression, which upholds, systemic inequality. I mean, that's a very intellectual argument. I don't think that's really what's driving, let's say, most of Seattle voters to or a majority bear majority to support defund the police. The reason that those Seattle voters are supporting defund the police is more the psychotherapeutic radicalization argument that it's about, well, this is going to make people traumatized and emotionally unsafe. It's going to hurt people's feelings. And it's not nice. And so my emphasis is much more on that side of things as opposed to march through the institutions. Mark Gramscian, you know, Cultural Marxism, I'm not saying the Cultural Marxism doesn't matter, and it certainly matters for critical race theory, gender ideology, and some of the terms that are use whiteness. Some of these terms undoubtedly and certainly in the trans case, you could maybe make the arc, although even in the trans case, yes, gender ideology, which has got that poke post Marxist lineage, you know, Judith Butler and all that might have played a role. But equally, I think the bigger appeal of of trans ideology was always around. We need to be kind to this very unfortunate group and that kind of, humanitarian extremism. In a way, the, you know, as it's applied. So we much, much less let them into to women's sports and women's women's prisons and so on. That is some, I guess, that humanitarian extremism is something that I point to much more than this intellectual system of critical theory, which I don't see, I see is, to some degree, legitimating the emotional drive that's coming from this, you know, overheated humanitarianism. What what God Saad calls suicidal empathy. I'm much more of that school of thought that this is kind of also, my view is that this is coming up from below as a mind virus. Again, something that people spread to each other and peer to peer pressures. It's much more of an emergent from below phenomenon rather than, a clique of people who say, okay, we're going to march through the institutions, we're going to take over the universities and take over the bureaucracy. Again, not saying that there isn't some of that intentionality, but I'm more of a view. Take more of the view that this is a more like a mind virus that spreads from below, rather than something that is deliberately a plan from above. And that's kind of the debate that we were having, and that I've had with a number of, theorists in this cell who really go into the, you know, they focus a lot more on the intellectual history and post modernism and critical theory and I'm not saying that isn't important, but I don't think its main engine here. Okay. Well, thank you like that I now I understand what she what the controversy was, so to speak. Okay. Melanie do you want to. Yeah. So many questions I can ask. So I'm going. To I know we can keep going, but I want to be mindful of time. So we we like to end this podcast podcast with leaving our listeners with something tangible that they can take away. So, I think that's something that we should maybe focus on that you mentioned a couple of times today is the role that social media plays, and the fact that people aren't reading books. So I wonder if you can answer my next question with that framing of like, what can people do, with respect to this whole concept of wokeness and maybe not thinking for themselves and so on. Again, with the framing of social media and books being places to get good information and not so good information. Well, yeah, I mean, social media, of course, is a fast thinking medium where, the things that go viral are things that drive emotions and, you know, require less attention. What would I say there? What can I say there other than to say, you know, you obviously you need to have a break from social media. And now, of course, there is more and less intelligent social media. And there is there are plenty of people on social media that are more nuanced. You know, of course, the character limit makes it hard to be too nuanced. The fact that you need to drive passions and emotions also militates against that. But yeah, what I do sometimes is I sort of limit engagement. So I'll, I'll be on social media for only as, as, you know, not too long hopefully each day and try and, you know, read slower sources books, for example. To the extent that you can have I still think people should be on social media, but I think it should be sort of. They should put it on a diet. I guess that's my my advice. What more can be said? I mean, of course, out of the social media chorus, one of the questions would be, I mean, I'm a pro-free speech person. I certainly wouldn't want to censor these views. One question we could ask is to what extent social media has advanced or led us to regress as a society. And I don't know, I don't want to be too negative. I mean, I think it's negative when people get totally caught up in particular videos of of very rare events, you know, even the Charlie Kirk of their day, I mean, one has to think statistically as well, and not just, emotionally. This term availability heuristic, where you have a very, oh, a very evocative, emotional signal coming from a picture, whether that be George Floyd or Charlie Kirk or whatever, to try and think more statistically and to say, well, what is the likelihood of, of a violent event occurring? You know, in the case of George Floyd, is that really representative when, you know, only roughly around ten unarmed African Americans, were shot by police in the entire year, and it wasn't different for whites, you know? Yeah. Trying to think statistically, I think, is how I would, what I would urge people to do rather than just riffing off the emotion of a particular individual or particular video. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah. I mean, great ideal to strive for. I don't know how many people will take that to heart. I mean, and the George Floyd example, just I hate to say it, but you know, you brought that up and when, when people were polled and asked how many unarmed, you know, black people were killed by police every year, like, you know, the numbers were in the thousands sometimes. You're right. I even heard a million. Like, it's it's insane. Because, again, while we know that far more compelling than statistics or facts are emotional arguments or emotional evidence, right. And so yes. So I think the best advice, as you were saying, was kind of like, was moderating your diet and having a well-balanced diet, right. You know, of what you're consuming because otherwise all you are getting is that emotions, you know, stimulated. Yeah. I mean, I would say one, one positive or more positive note. Clearly long form podcasts like this one and others are doing well. So there is also a a desire for, you know, I think for, for more nuanced and, and long form thinking out there too. So it's not all all that, that, you know, tweet in that TikTok video. I mean, of course, those are much more common, but I think we can also take some comfort from the popularity of podcasts and longer form YouTube content. So, yeah, I don't want to end on a totally. No, but certainly would be hypocritical for us to say no, don't watch anything on social media. But, nonetheless, I do like that framing of maybe take a step back and look at the statistics and try to be mindful of, emotional thinking and evaluations of of certain things that are happening in our world. Okay, so on that note, Eric, thank you so much for being with us today. This has been such a great conversation. I think we've given our listeners a lot to think about, a lot of nuanced perspectives on the various topics that we explore today. So thank you so much. Again, I thank you for coming on. Thanks, Melanie. And, thanks for that. Thank you. And, you know, every time we have someone like you on, really, I am so grateful because it's not just the information that you provide, but it's that you model for other people a certain way of thinking and doing and saying, you know, despite the risks, you do speak out. You are you know, you're again, you're trying to present real information to, to a broader audience rather than just trying to manipulate emotions. So I think that's so important. So thank you for coming on. Thanks a lot that you two, by the way. Thank you. So on that positive note, until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.