Loading summary
Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too. All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast expert setup on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. Wayfair Every style, every home.
- [00:52]
B
The UK Police release body cam footage of the arrest and death of Henry Novak. And right wing influencers assemble at Moscow's alternative to Davos. I'm Jeff Schoenberger here with Ashley Farley to discuss these breaking stories. This is the compact podcast. So, Ashley, this story has been described as the, the new, I suppose, White George Floyd, which is a little tendentious in terms of how it's being politicized by the, by the right. But it is a horrifying and tragic story from Britain which our American listeners may not be familiar with. So perhaps you could tell us about it from the beginning and what the latest development in the story is.
- [01:53]
C
Yeah, they're calling it the right George Floyd moment. And it is, you know, whatever you think about the politicization of it, it is really shocking. So what set things off is that on Tuesday, the body cam footage of the arrest and, well, his death isn't recorded, but the moment that he loses consciousness, that was released to the public and you could actually see the events as they unfolded. And I have actually tried very hard to avoid these, these videos of people dying, this kind of like death porn. Like to this day, I've not seen the Charlie Kirk video, any, any hint that it was coming up. I closed the tabs, but I did just watch this. I don't know why I wish that I hadn't. I felt really sick, really awfully sick. And I guess part of it is that I could see my students in that boy. So Henry Novick was a young university student at the University of Southampton. He was on a night out celebrating the end of term with his football teammates. And he was a light drinker. So at his death, his blood alcohol level was below the legal driving limit. So he was not drunk or anything like that. And just to give you a kind of play by play of what happened, he was walking down the street after a night out about 11 quarter past 11 and recording snapchats of himself. So there is video of more or less leading up to the event, but no witnesses or video of the actual stabbing. He was walking down the street. He's recording snapshots of himself. And a Sikh man walked by who was wearing a very large. It has emerged since, not ceremonial dagger around his neck and prominently shown on his chest. But it's kind of unclear. The Sikh community has denied that this is a. It was an official dagger that actually there's only meant to keep a much smaller one. And inside their clothes, but he was wearing a very, very large one around his neck. And Henry cheekily asked, are you a bad man? And he responded, yes, I'm a bad man. And the video stops at that point. Oh, he grabbed the. The Sikh man grabbed the. The phone from. From Novak, so that the Sikh man's name is Vikram Digwa. He grabbed the phone from Henry. And that's the kind of the end of the video. And what happened after that is that Novak was stabbed five times, once, twice in the chest. And ultimately this is what killed him. But what the controversy is not from the actual stabbing, but the what. The what. How the police responded and what the body cam footage ultimately showed, which was Novak was on the ground bleeding internally and unable to. Unable to breathe. And he says nine times, I can't breathe. He tells officers four times that he's been stabbed. And an officer responds, I don't think you have, mate. The actual killer tells police that Novak has actually not been stabbed and that he racially abused him, punched him, and knocked the turban off his head and that he was a victim of a racist attack. And this was not true. But the police immediately believed him and began to cuff Novak even as he was dying and telling the police officers that he'd been stabbed. They believed his killer immediately. And then he said, oh, he's not been stabbed. And one of the police officers says, I know, but we have to check, don't we? And she kind of. They kind of make a half attempt to check if he's been stabbed. And they just lift up his shirt a little bit and just his stomach. So they don't actually see that he's been stabbed. And they think that he's drunk and that he's just. That he's going to be sick. And then all of a sudden, the police officer says, oh, his pupils aren't even responding. And that's the end of the video. So he was arrested. He was being read as rights. And then he lost consciousness and he Died a little while later. And the thing is, like, it's, it's the most awful, awful thing to see because it does, it's, it's, it's so senseless because the, the killer is like, oh, he's not been stabbed. He's lying. Like, what do you think, dude? Like, you think they're not going to notice the enormous chest wound from which this man is dying? Like, you just, you're lying and allowing this boy to bleed out and die for what reason? And they called his brother, called 999, which is the British equivalent of 91 1, and said. And reported a racial attack. And the killer's parents came. They called his parents before they called 999, I think something like that. But before the police arrived, the parents came. He gave his knife to his digua. Gave the knife to his mother. His mother took the knife home and hit it and did not, when they called 999, did not call an ambulance. So it's just completely insane how he thought he could get away from stabbing, get away with stabbing this person in the chest and then just allowed the person to die, allowed him to die the whole time, lying. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's shocking to see. It's horrible, horrible footage. But what gets you is how he's got seconds, he needs medical care urgently and the police are, are listening to his murder, believing his murder, that this is actually a racial attack, that he is the victim and, and, and that's just, just the end of it. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's horrible. I don't recommend anybody goes and watches it. His, his hands are like, awfully white and pale as he's being handcuffed. And you know, how they could not notice. I mean, it was very dark, to be fair. Like they couldn't see the blood everywhere. But yeah, it's a, it's a really senseless thing. And so, you know, people are saying, well, what happened was the police were actually trained and this is what's, you know, causing the, the controversy in Parliament and, you know, never mind the, the protest that erupted on the streets yesterday and, and there were some arrests and police claim that some of their officers were injured and that these were like, violent protests and so on. But what's causing the controversy, at least in Parliament, is that someone pulled up official police documents that showed that they were receiving equity training that explicitly said equity means you don't treat everyone the same and that people should be different, treated differently. Based on the color of their skin, that this was explicitly taught. And as a sociologist who's given equity training as part of my job, I was like, yep, that is what we have been teaching people across the professions, doctors, nurses and so on, for the better part of 15 years at least. And, you know, the people defending this are like, oh, no, it was just clumsily worded. Nobody's actually saying that. No, that is literally, you couldn't possibly say it any better, that equity means that you don't treat everyone equally, everyone the same. And I, it, you know, it's one thing, like, to teach that to nurses, maybe, that you can't go to a Hindu and offer them chicken. And if they can't eat, like you're like pork or whatever or meat of some sort of. And if they can't eat that, just call them fussy, you know, like, that's, that's why I was there, teaching nurses this sort of thing. Like, you don't have to pussy foot around these things. You can ask people, do you have any dietary requirements? It's not going to offend anybody. You don't just treat everyone the same, because that's equality. And that will mean that this person will not be able to eat the meal that you gave them. But if you're going to teach that to police officers, you are essentially saying you are not equal before the law, that not everyone is equal before the law. And it just kind of passed unnoticed that such an extraordinary undermining of civil rights had happened. And this is actually very, very common. So this training that is given out to these professions. Yes, I gave it in universities as part of the education of doctors and nurses, but often it's delivered by NGOs and activist groups that will go into the police, that will go into all sorts of institutions, and they will give this training that is horrendously incorrect and gives, or at least gives far too generous readings of the actual law in favor of their desired purposes. And one. Another example of this, that and. And people on the street know, know it, have started to notice and they have got mad about it. And this is just another example is LGBTIQ plus training that went into the UK police force and told and to teach them about hate speech and policing speech online, where they taught the police officers an extraordinarily expansive definition of hate speech. And what was act, what is actually illegal, which was not true and did not actually match what the law said. And then the police dutifully went out and acted on this. And yet people noticed when the police came to their door. And so, you know, for a long time, this stuff has been going under the radar until you get to a point where something like this happens and this boy is handcuffed on the ground, arrested immediately based on the word of this other man while he's dying. And even after they realized that he'd been lying, they never handcuffed Digua. They never did that. They handcuffed this boy who was lying on the ground dying, but they never handcuffed the man who actually killed him at any point, even when they arrested him. And so this is like a very clear differential treatment. And just to say one more thing, when I was listening to coverage of this this morning on the radio, and you had all these like this, like, roll call of, you know, experts in justice and equity and so on coming on, and one of them was like, no, everything is working great in this country. We've made huge strides. Like, for example, we arrested the brother of the prince, for goodness sake. And he's basically like, everybody has an equal opportunity of being arrested. You have any. And that for him was like, equality instead of, like, equality before the law. Like, presumption of innocence is like, no, you have an equal chance of being arrested. And that is my gauge for, like, we're doing really well because we're arresting even the brother of the prince. And it's just strikes me that that kind of thinking is what led to this horrible tragedy where it's like, well, we all have an equal chance of being arrested. Ergo, I should equally doubt this white person. And maybe because I. In the past, we had been doubting the other side will fall on this side now and make sure that he has an equal chance of being arrested, just to even things out a little bit. And unfortunately, somebody dies. And it's an awful story.
- [13:46]
B
So one thing I did want to add is that the perpetrator has now been convicted and sentenced to, I believe, the pretty much maximum sentence under. Under British law. So, you know, one thing I. I haven't. I have to say, you know, I haven't followed the story that closely until relatively recently. So one thing that I'm wondering about is what's your sense of, like, why the. The. I mean, the, the incident occurred in December and the conviction just recently, you know, the, the. The Digua was recently convicted and sentenced, I believe, a week or two ago. So what's your sense of why this is flaring up in this particular moment? Is it because of the release of this footage?
- [14:37]
C
Yeah. So the event actually happened at the beginning of December, I think it was December 3rd or something like that. And it has been very variously in the news. But the reason why things have kicked off is, is because you can. The. The release of the body cam footage, which I think was Monday or Tuesday. And, and this is why it's like the George Floyd moment, because he literally says several times, I can't. He says nine times, I can't breathe. And like, before anybody, you know, I, I've seen this, this argument online where people are like, well, why is this coming about now? People are using this politically. Yeah, okay, yes, people are using this politically, but I don't think that stories like this ought to be suppressed because some groups might use it in a politically unsavory way. And you know, I was equally horrified by George Floyd, the killing of George Floyd and that. That was equally horrible to me. You know, I don't want, you know, these kinds of injustices to happen. I don't want people to be treated differently because of the color of their skin, white or black. And at some point we've got to get to it. Like the goal ought to be to get to a situation where we do treat people equally before the law, where we do treat people equal. I mean, that's a very difficult thing, I suppose. I mean, if I was trying to. I mean, I'm not very much disposed to giving police the benefit of the doubt, but I guess, you know, in a, in a situation like that, it was difficult. You couldn't see that he had been stabbed. It was difficult circumstances, unclear exactly what had been happened. They thought it was just a bar brawl or like post bar brawl or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, I guess as humans we have confirmation bias. Like you. They had been told on the phone this is a racially motivated event. And that is how when they arrived on the scene, how they interpreted everything that they saw. You know, it's. Unfortunately, things like this may happen because, you know, there are lots of people and things happen every day and eventually something injustice will happen. But. But I think that the way that we've been going has been to tip over the edge into. And people have noticed it. That's why they're on the streets, that's why they're mad. And that's why people were mad about George Floyd as well. That it tips over against you and you can feel the injustice. But the injustice is I am not being treated the same. And we don't fix that by treating people differently based on the color of their skin. But like, hey, maybe It'll even out, you know, that's the wrong way to go about it and people will feel the injustice.
- [17:39]
B
So the essay I was reminded of as I read about this was a piece that compact published by Dan Hitchens a couple of years ago called the Thing that Swallowed Britain. And it's an account of, you know, what's, I suppose, broadly described as the awokening of various institutions in the UK and, but you know, it doesn't quite use that language. It defines this notion of the thing, you know, this, the seeming, you know, sort of ideological blob that's gradually absorbed all these institutions into itself. And there is a section, I mean, he covers a number of different institutions in, in Britain, but the final section is about the police and particularly the creation of a college of policing in 2012 and the way that this kind of bureaucratized policing and introduced all of these both bureaucratic and ideological imperatives into it. And I think it speaks to some of what you were just describing, Ashley, in terms of how this kind of training is likely to produce these sorts of outcomes. Um, so anyway, I recommend people check out this essay because I think it provide, I mean, it's, I think, chillingly prescient about the likelihood of something like this happening given that, given the way that policing has been, quote, unquote, reformed and interestingly that, you know, this occurred largely under the Conservative governments of David Cameron, Teresa May. And so it is really a product of the sort of, I suppose, kind of bipartisan post Blairist bureaucratic consensus that, you know, has, has developed over the years and has really changed these institutions. It does seem to me, you know, the, this is a place where the, the contrast with the US in term, in terms of a more centralized system is very clear because, you know, part of why this, you know, we have many of our own problems with policing and police, but this kind of centralization isn't really imaginable because of the local control of police departments. And so it, it does show that I think you can have in, in a country like Britain where these institutions are much more centrally controlled and organized such that, you know, governments in Westminster can have a, can implement reforms that will, you know, affect local police departments and, you know, small towns or mid sized cities, you know, that that is not so likely to happen. For better and for worse, that is not so likely to happen in the US just because of the decentralization of our systems. And so the Hitchens piece I think is, is a useful, gives some useful background on the specific bureaucratic and structural reforms which are often presented in this kind of pseudo scientific sort of, this is about creating evidence based policing and that this, this seeming kind of neutral bureaucratization and installation of a kind of expert rule is part of what created the, the, the, the opportunity for these kind of ideological actors to you know, produce a, A, a extremely influential set of, of proposals and reforms that you know, again have sort of radiated out at every level of, of society. So anyway, the people, if an interesting background which I, I think is kind of disturbingly prescient about a case like this is Dan Hitchens is the thing that swallowed Britain, which compact published in 2023. So, and, and it talks about also about the NHS nursing doctor, you know, as, as you were talking about. So it, it shows that there is kind of this unified set of again, ostensibly new sort of neutral reforms that have to do with kind of installing expertise at the top, you know, as, as the, the organizing principle of all these institutions and sort of evidence based practices and things like this. And how this, this is really what laid the groundwork for these developments.
- [22:18]
C
Well, what's funny is that a lot of this stuff came from the United States and it's because the United States has such a decentralized structure that NGOs and advocacy groups and claims makers of various kinds will often go to the supranational level. Like these ideas will they tend to go from America, from American lobby groups up to like the UN where then they come down through the eu. And then once you get something in the eu, there's a possibility of like through their obsession with harmonization. Now you can have a humongous impact in a way that you simply could not in the United States. But they will also like this is a, I can't remember what it's called in social policy, but it's a very specific kind of strategy that's used across a huge range of policy domains and issues where the American claim makers will go to these supernational organizations, but they will also target like England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, because you have the opportunity to have something at the top filtered down to the rest of the, the policy in the country. And then once you get all these, and then the, the New Zealand is another example, Australia is another example. These are very simple kinds of quick wins. And then once you have all these countries, then they'll, what they do is they create a list and they're like 22 countries in the world, 50 countries in the world have implemented our stupid policy. And then they'll go back to the United States and you're like, look, fall in line. And they'll, they'll lobby small, like little by little. You know, this is what they do with assisted dying. They do all sorts of things like smacking bans and then they have to go through this extraordinarily like convoluted quest to change the whole world. And then they come back to the United States and that's, they're like, okay, now you fall in line finally. So unfortunately, the structure of claim of policymaking in America, I mean, good for you, it protects you, but we're, we become the victims of it. And I'm not saying that the end goal, you know, people don't take me too literally. I'm not saying that the end goal is like literally just to change the policy in America. But because it's so difficult, people who care about this tend to organize internationally and can have a lot more effect internationally than they can at home. And this is the result. And it takes time. It takes, these ideas are thought up in American journals and then they're on our streets 15, 20 years later.
- [24:52]
B
So moving to the other poll of the or one of the other major polls of the multipolar world. St. Petersburg is currently hosting the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, described as the Russian Davos. In, in attendance are notable right wing influencers including Candace Owens and the Tate, Andrew Tate and his brother, as well as other luminaries of American culture like Steven Seagal, the action he, you know, action film hero and, and martial arts star. So this event, I, I was kind of interested. I had actually not heard of this St. Petersburg International Economic Forum before. Ashley, maybe this also wrote rings a bell for you, but this reminded me a little bit of when in the, at the peak moment of globalization you had the Sao Lu Forum, which was an, a sort of anti imperialist gathering for critics of globalization. And it, you know, was, was took place in Brazil and interestingly then, you know, it was, it was under the auspices of the Workers Party, the pt. But then interestingly, you know, Lula, the leader of the PT, current President of Brazil, also President the in the 2000s, eventually became a kind of star of Davos. So there was this weird moment of fusion where the, the, the Sao Paulo Forum was, was sort of merged with Davos as these various kind of left center left and social democratic figures kind of were, were absorbed into the global governance projects of, of the World Economic Forum. So now we have the sound. So anyway, this kind of alternative, you know, anti Globalization Forum thing, it, it just brought back to mind These, these gatherings that happened, you know, back at the peak of globalization when you had these sort of scrappy anti globalization movements. Now, of course, you have this, you know, bizarre conclave of, of right wing influencers and conspiracy theorists in Moscow or in St. Petersburg, sorry. And it's, it's being widely covered. You sort of have, or I believe it is actually taking place in Moscow, even though it's called the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. And it is, you know, you have Candace Owens kind of swanning around Moscow talking about how wonderful it is there are all these churches and that, you know, she's in a truly Christian culture. And you have, you know, then you have the Tate Brothers, notorious sort of misogynist influencers who can't really lay much claim to representing Christian culture. But in any case, they're there and you know, it does it, it speaks to this kind of odd. I, I believe that this figure, this other influencer, Lauren Chen, is also there. So Chen was prosecuted by the US Government for basically running a media organization called Tenant Media that was directly being funded by Russia. And so this kind of axis of, of alignment between right wing influencers and the Kremlin is, is a real thing. And it's interesting in part because, you know, back sort of 10 years ago in the 2016 campaign, obviously you had Russiagate. You had this idea on the, the left or at least among sort of resistance liberals that like Trump was some sort of Manchurian candidate for Russia and that, you know, the alt right and all these other phenomena were some sort of Russian, you know, or some sort of Russian plants trying to subvert America from within. You had this weird kind of kind of liberal McCarthyism around, this idea that there was this kind of sinister Russian plot to undermine America. And so what's kind of interesting is that now you have these right wing influencers are sort of openly embracing their alignment with, with the Kremlin and just kind of celebrating it. You know, first you have this Tenant media thing where it was seemingly somewhat clandestine that you had this kind of connection between this right wing media organization that brought on a number of kind of notable MAGA influencer types and then turned out to be receiving money from Moscow. It was also kind of comical in terms of how ineffective it was. It was like, I think somebody calculated how much Russia had sort of paid these people and then how much reach there are these Tenant Media products actually had. And it was like, pretty pathetic, you know, sort of like, I think somebody showed that they were, you know, paying hundreds of dollars like per view or something like it was, it was not a successful opportunity operate, it was not a successful info op. But nonetheless, you know that there is this increasingly open alignment and, and it's notable that these figures like Candace Owens are not, you know, Owens is part of this faction that's now very critical of Trump specifically over Israel stuff and has kind of descended into relatively straightforward anti Semitic conspiratorial narratives. And this does also echo what happened when Tucker Carlson went to Moscow a couple years ago and there was kind of this bizarre Potemkin tour where he went around and Rhapsody and this was under Biden, but he went around, you know, in sort of peak inflation and he went around and rhapsodized about how cheap all the groceries were. And you know, as people pointed out at the time, he wasn't really taking into account the salaries of like the average salaries of people in Russia, but he was just sort of assuming that they earned the same amount as Americans. But you know, it was a very odd moment, but now it's, it seems that this sort of faction of, of, you know, right wing malcontents who are unhappy with the, the sort of neoconservative direction of the, the current White House are just sort of openly aligning themselves with, with Russia and saying it's great and you know, it's, it's really the, the center of Christian civilization. And again there that this, this kind of thing has been going on for a while, like Steven Seagal's connection with Putin. I, I remember reading and, and listening to stuff about it like 10 years ago. And I remember actually listening to Seagal on Alex Jones talking about kind of implying that he was part of some special ops force that, you know, Putin was, was deploying to defend Christian civilization from Islamism or something like that. So it was very, very odd. But I think, you know, part of what's interesting is how again there were 10 years ago these kind of vague conspiratorial murmurings about how the American right was just a collection of Russian assets. And now you have people on the American right who are just kind of openly embracing that identity and sort of celebrating it. So I suppose the beautiful thing about conspiracy theories is eventually a lot of them end up coming true, even if they weren't true when, when they were first introduced. And that, that seems to be the case here. So what are your thoughts on this important, important gathering of the, the true global resistance?
- [33:18]
C
I mean, I, I, I hesitate to repeat myself, but I've written about this before with like maga, Communism and the way that the MAGA communists, like, were attracted to Duganism. And I was like, well, this is because you. That everybody is like searching for some kind of authenticity. The left was just doing it first, and now the right is doing the same thing. They're like, they're. It's exactly like. Dugan sounds like a basic run of the mill sociologist, right? He's just talking about white people, but like all this stuff about like identity and this sort of thing, that's what left wing sociologists have been saying for a very, very long time. So I don't want to sound like a broken record, but obviously all this happened because like any kind of proper left collapsed. And so you just have left and right wings of identity politics and they're just kind of arguing about whose blood and soil we ought to be honoring. And that's. That's essentially it. But the other thing that was interesting is that you mentioned that there was all this clandestine funding of the right. But do you remember when it was revealed that there was all this clandestine funding of the left from Russia? That, that Russia, it turned out, was funding all these people. They were paying all these people to post on the Internet, like Black pride stuff. And I remember like I used to get. Got trolled by some of these accounts and I'm like, whoa, this is weird. You're posting the same comment all over the place. Like, who. That's obviously like a quasi bot account or someone copying and pasting. And it turned out that Russia was funding also the left.
- [34:59]
B
Well, what I remember is these kind of weird things where they apparently in the the 2010s were creating these like fake Facebook pages. But there was like a particularly bizarre incident. And so there was sort of this, you know, government sponsored troll farm in Russia. I think that was essentially, you know, p. Pushing this kind of bizarre nonlinear narrative warfare of some sort. And so they were. They were kind of funding all sides of these debates. And there was some really strange incident where like, there was a fake Facebook, like fake Black Lives Matter Facebook page and then a fake, you know, pro police Facebook page. And they were both. They turned out to both be. Have been created by these Russian operatives. And then like there were some. And then they actually like planned or like they. They actually announced like a rally for each of them. And they basically were like, oh, you know, show up at whatever plaza in Houston or something and like a handful of people, not. Not many people, but I think like a handful of people from both sides did show up. So it was like they actually they actually succeeded at creating this completely fake, you know, sort of pseudo event just, just by having some, some like, you know, 20 year old dudes in a, in an office park outside of Moscow like creating these fake Facebook pages. So I can't remember the details about that, but it was pretty, it was pretty funny. So I don't know if that's what you're talking. I don't know if that's what you're talking about.
- [36:49]
C
Yeah, it was all these like Facebook pages and like, just people being paid. They, they thought that they were recruited by these like, social justice organizations and they were like, all right, that sounds like a good cause. They were like posting online all day, every day. And it turned out that they were actually being funded by Russia to do that. And I don't know what the point of that is, but I guess, I don't know, maybe it was something like trying to get Trump elected. And you know, I mean, sometimes admit it, you, you want to write something, you have an idea and a great hook would be if the left was being stupid somewhere. And so maybe they just stoked it. Like, they're like, they, they, they amped it up on purpose so that to make it easier to kind of big up the, the other side is the more logical side. I don't know, something like that, but it would be, I mean, it's pretty hard to make the left any more caricatured than it was at that point. But I don't, I. For its own purposes, you know, Russia has attempted at least to big up both sides of the culture war. And, but I do think that the identity politics is sincerely held and that these, on both sides and that these people who are joining in St. Petersburg and possibly also Moscow are ironically, they are stoking the same anti liberal trends that the other side has been characterized by for a long time. But it's just that liberalism has become so degraded that reacting against it, you kind of react against what it's supposed to be, not realizing that it has long since moved away from that. And I have not explained that very well, but I would recommend a piece I wrote in Compact called Woke Lost But Freedom Didn't Win. Where I look at Andrew Doyle's book on the end of Woke, where he says, you know, what people didn't realize is that wokeness was never was, was profoundly anti liberal. It was, you know, if you think about the legacy of liberalism, it hated absolutely every aspect of it, but it wore liberalism as a skin suit and it used the general kind of liberal leanings of ordinary people as a way to, as a smokescreen to get all sorts of illiberal things that they wanted through. You know, so people were like gay marriage. Yeah. Like live and let live. I don't care. And then like bundled within that was like all this trans crap which was extraordinarily anti liberal. That was not about treating everybody equally and so on. And instead of like recognizing that that's what was going on, the right reacted against what they thought liberalism was. And so the end result is that we just have this extraordinarily pervasive anti liberalism and a pervasive identity politics where everyone is just arguing over like what color it ought to be, who should we discriminate against, like whose blood and whose soil matters more. And yeah, I mean, woke lost, but freedom didn't win. It's. I know it's a, it's kind of a cliche to say like the woke. Right. But I do think that the, the right has it. Wokeness belongs on the right. That's, that's, that's its home. The problem was when the left picked it up. I expect this from the right. It's actually, it's actually just completely good. That's where it is. Not left. Smarten up. Like we need opposition to this, all of these generally anti liberal trends. Not that that's ever going to happen, but I'm just saying that in the dream world ought to have happened.
- [40:39]
B
And with that, please rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app and subscribe to compact compactmag.com subscribe. Thanks, Ashley. And until next time,