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Simon James Copland, "The Male Complaint: The Manosphere and Misogyny Online" (Polity, 2025)
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Dr. Simon James Copland
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Dr. Simon James Copland
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Morteza Hajizadeh
Brad, you're on mute.
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Marshall Po
This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host, Moteza Hajizadeh from Critical Theory Channel. Today, I'm honored to be speaking with Dr. Simon James Copland about a Recent book that he has published with Polity Press. The book is called the Mail Complaint, and it just came out a few months ago. Simon James Copeland is Honorary Fellow at the Australian National University. Simon, thank you very much for accepting this invitation.
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Dr. Simon James Copland
Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to have this conversation.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
Before we start talking about the book, the Mail Complaint, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your field of expertise, and why you decided to write a book about the Mail Complaint?
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Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, good question. So I started my PhD and my research in 2017, and it was just after Donald Trump had been elected as the President of the United States for the first time. There had been the vote for Brexit in the uk And I think a lot of people, and myself included, were starting to really question what's going on in the world. And that was really a big interest to me and I think a big interest to everybody to really understand this. And I'd had a background before then, working and researching in some gender studies, particularly around sexuality, and thought, you know, how, how are these two things linked? And through my PhD, I went into my PhD looking to do research more than anything. I didn't come in with a very set topic. I wasn't, you know, I need to research this specific thing. And when, you know, in the, in the application process Trump got elected, I kind of thought this is a kind of area that I want to start investigating to really understand in depth what's going on in our world. And so I did my PhD, started to investigate these kind of communities. Who was it that was driving this victory? Who was it that was driving these social changes that I think many people didn't expect or really understand at the time, and I think probably still don't understand now. And I came across the manosphere and men's rights groups as what I considered to be one of these driving forces. And at the time, the manosphere was relatively unknown. There had been some high profile events and incidents, but relatively unknown, but I considered was actually a key driving force to understand why Trump managed to secure that unexpected victory and why things were happening. And so I kind of started to dive more into those rabbit holes and to truly understand it. And so I did my PhD. I finished that in 2022. And then from there I decided I wanted to explain that to the world and to show people, talk to people about what's going on and try and have a deeper conversation about what's going on that's leading to men, to these spaces and some women, what's going on that's led sadly to Trump being reelected last year. It's very appreciate that I started this journey after his first election and the book has come out after his second election. And I think that there's a lot of things that we still need to understand about this world, particularly if we want to change it and make it better and not have these hateful communities continue to rise.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
I can understand how topical your research area was back then in 2006 and 16, if I'm not mistaken. Right?
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Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah. Well, 16, 17.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
Yeah, yeah. And it has. I think you're right. I came across the word manosphere myself a couple of years ago, but it's gaining more traction and it just goes to show that it's still even more relevant and we'll get to talk about some of these issues. But can you give us first of all a definition of what do you mean by manosphere? What does it mean? And I was really interested in your book because you start with, with a reflection of the film Joker, which I guess a lot of people were making some allusions to this movie when I think it was again in 2017 or 18 when again there was this Black Lives Matter movement in the US but would it be great if we could talk, tell us what is Manosphere and why you think this movie Joker is important to. Is an important reflection.
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Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah. So I started with Joker because it drove. There was a lot of discussions, a lot of people connected it to the manosphere at the time. In particular, people connected the main character, Arthur, who becomes the Joker figure, the villain of Batman. He becomes a Joker feeler. It's really an origin story. But how did the Joker come about? And what you saw in that movie and what it portrayed was a man who was clearly downtrodden, who was facing significant injustices. He has severe mental health issues, he loses his. He's bashed on the street by kids, his job is a sign twirler for a store. And then he gets bashed and loses his sign. He loses his job, his mother has severe mental health problems, and then he loses his benefits. And all of this leads to him becoming frustrated and feeling a desire to gain some level of power back in his life. And then he murders someone in self defense and then starts to feel that there's this power that he can gain through murder and through villain. And that storyline I found quite compelling. I really enjoyed the movie, but it led to this significant debate around incels at the time. And I'll tell you what incels are in a minute, but it led to this significant debate where you had men on the men's rights movement who identified with this character and really felt connection to him. And then you had people who were really critical of the movie saying that it was sympathizing too much with male men who commit violence, that it was sympathizing with these men far too much, that it was showing that violence is an okay response to these kinds of things. This was the kind of belief system, this was the kind of concern at the time. And I found both of those responses extremely frustrating to the movie because I think there was something deeper that we could understand here about how our society leads people down very direct, dangerous paths, but at the same time how we must take ownership over that being in those situations and how we can respond to it. And I think that the response from the right people who felt, who identified with this character didn't engage with the agency that he had into not commit those murders. But the people on progressive sides who were very critical of the storyline, they very much weren't willing to engage with the societal. What's society doing that can drive people down to different darker spaces? So that's kind of why that, that story really appealed to me and I found it really relevant component of this debate. I think going back to your first question though, what is the manosphere? And I think that we can answer that in connection to Joker to some extent. So the manosphere is a collection of blogs, social media, forums, anything online, places where people go online. It's a primarily online space. And it's an online space where men come together, primarily men, although women do participate, they come together to talk about, quote unquote, men's interests. And that's normally discussions about sex and relationships, about self help, about how to live a good life. But it's always through the lens, a very strong anti feminist, very strong misogynistic lens. And the primary belief amongst all of the groups in the manosphere is a belief that society has turned against men, that has become feminized, that feminism in particular has now dominated our society so much that men have become the new oppressed class and that therefore men need to fight back against feminism and fight back against women. Because there's a belief in an inherent, inherent nature of women, particularly around sex and relationships that men need to overcome to be able to be successful in that sphere. So that's the kind of broad overarching theory and idea. And then amongst within that there's three or four distinct groups. So the first is kind of men's Rights groups. And you sometimes hear people talk about the manosphere and men's rights interchangeably. Now, the men's rights movement has been around since the 1970s. It's actually not quite a spin off. But people who started within second wave feminism became frustrated men who became frustrated or felt that second wave feminism was targeting them and then started to fight for men's rights rights, believing that men also were facing oppression. Initially the discussion there was that men and women both faced oppression due to gender systems. And then the men's rights movement sort of shifted and said, no, actually men face this oppression more than women and fought against that. So that's kind of a bit more of an old school thinking and group. But the manosphere now comprises of newer groups. And the first one that's probably most people will know about and have heard of. And this goes back to the Joker story is incels. A lot of people called the Arthur character an incel. And incels are involuntary celibates. They're people who. Men who are unable to or feel that they're unable to get a relationship with a woman, have sex with a woman. And they blame their physical traits, their short stature, all these kinds of things for that. They say that they're just basically inherently undateable and then get very angry at women for this. And some incels have conducted violent mass attacks targeting women. There's pickup artists and pickup artists are men who. There's men who. People like Andrew Tate who create these courses in which men can go and learn the tips and techniques about how to pick up women. And often the people who run these courses make lots and lots of money out of selling snake. Snake oil to men, selling these false ideas to men. But the pickup artists a lot, they teach this thing called game. And game is a series of techniques that men can use to learn how to pick up women. And these techniques are often highly manipulative, a belief in really weird ideas of women's inherent nature. And they teach things such as no doesn't mean no, that you should just keep pressuring that. One way to pick up women is to consistently neg them to say negative things about them because that will undermine their self confidence and make them want to have sleep with you. These kinds of really horrific things. And the final group is called Men Going their own way. And they're men. Normally in their middle age. They've often had bad, messy relationships, bad breakups for whatever reason. And they decide that the best outcome, the best thing they should do, that men should do is to quote unquote go their own way, they should stop. There's steps you can take. The first is to don't get married to a woman. The second one is don't enter a relationship with a woman and don't have sex with women unless it's with a sex worker. And then don't have sex with women at all. And then finally go and be an independent person living in the woods by yourself, off grid, these kinds of things. So to distance yourself from society entirely because society is so toxic, ironically, they do this at the same time. They say men should go their own way, while at the same time spending all of their time talking about women and complaining about women. And it's kind of this feeling of we want to be independent, but they're actually still inherently, they're very deeply connected to this idea and feeling very jaded about not being able to have a strong relationship. So anyway, there's three really distinct groups on top of the men's rights groups that make up this community. And they've got similar ideas but also different ways that they deal with those ideas.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
There's a lot to unpacking what you said, but what I'm personally interested in is exactly the point you mentioned that whenever you start to talk about minority group's rights, whether it's sexual minority group, women, religious minority, ethnic minority, the other, let's say party usually might say that oh look, it's reverse racism or feminism is actually something is anti men, which is absolutely wrong. And if I'm not mistaken, the very, very first, I mean socialist, I think it was Charles Fourier who once said that the society is not free unless the women are free. And feminists have always acknowledged the fact that, that this patriarchal discourse or patriarchal frameworks of power is not only exploiting women, but also men. And if in the society women achieve their freedom or liberation, it's going to benefit men as well. But it's the question that I have here is how do you, especially young people. You do mention that a lot of young people also gravitate to this man sphere because there's economic pressure. And it's the same in Australia that you and I live as well. All over the world, you know, there's this gravitation to the right wingers and usually one of the discourses is the progressive women, especially LGBTIQ post groups or women, and they depict them as if they are the enemy. And men cannot, for example, buy a house, cannot get a good job because there are a lot of women out there or because there are a Lot of migrants out there. But why do you think, especially young people, gravitate to these groups and how do you think we should respond to them without, let's say, putting them off? Because you definitely want to win the sympathy and make it clear to them it's not women who are your enemy.
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Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah. So it's the million dollar question. And I think that there's two components to this. The one is, why do people gravitate to these groups? And it's really what I try to investigate in the book is really to understand what is so appealing about these groups that people are heading back in this kind of direction. And I think you did mention that when movements like feminism arise, then you often inevitably get backlash. And there's a lot of really great feminists who talk about why do we receive this backlash when this is occurring. And I can argue, and I think I would argue that the manosphere is another version of this kind of backlash towards feminism. It's a backlash towards third wave feminism, in many ways, a backlash to the MeToo movement. A lot of the conversations about sexual relationships and a lot of the third wave feminism of the MeToo movement has been and really targeting these histories of sexual assault and the acceptance of sexual assault and rape within our society. And a lot of the manosphere is presenting backlash to that, saying that this issue isn't as big as women are making it out to be, saying that men face false accusations all the time, that men no longer can be men, all this kind of, kind of rubbish. That's really. So it definitely aligns with a lot of this kind of backlash that's been going on. And so, yeah, I think it's really interesting to understand why is that the case. And I would, you know, I can really summarize this really shortly and then maybe we can flesh it out a lot. But, you know, I think that, and this is, this aligns really strongly with a lot of other movements are happening around the world at the moment. And here in Australia, we've just seen last week the March for Australia, strong anti migrant rallies that were. That led and had speakers from Naz, from neo Nazis pushing for an end to mass immigration. I think that the manosphere, the reasoning behind the manosphere and the reasoning behind those movements are very similar. And so it's worth. We can really link them the same with the Far right, with QAnon, with a lot of conspiracy theories happening. All of these things are very much linked. And what's happening is that the world has changed a lot in the last definitely the last 10 years, but even more so really since the rise of neoliberalism. And people everywhere are feeling deeply insecure, both in terms of themselves, in terms of their social standing and in terms of their economic standing. And we know that there's a bunch of statistics around this that suggests that people feel lots and lots of different people feel this, feel this insecurity. And what's happening is that people are searching for solutions for understanding about why that's the case, and solutions to deal with that. And figures such as Andrew Tate, and let's talk about the manuscript, specifically figures such as Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Rush V. A lot of these leaders are capitalizing on that and they're selling a really simple story. The simple story is that women are to blame for this, the rise of feminism is to blame for this. And that the solution to this is to engage in these self help techniques to become your own man, to be this kind of strong, independent man, to return to the ideas of what manhood used to be. And that story is really appealing because it's really simple. It gives you a very clear enemy. And stories are often really valuable if you have a very clear enemy. And in this case it's Moon. And it gives you this really clear understanding about how the world is operating, even if it's incorrect. And a clear solution that you can do yourself, that you can really participate in. And that might be by spend a couple of thousand dollars or a couple thousand pounds on a pickup artist course, or go online and vent about women, or in the most extreme cases, become violent and engage in violent attacks. And that's what's happened within cells. But this is a really clear and easy story that people understand. And this story is replicated with different enemies, particularly by the far right. And so going back to the march for Australia that just happened, the story again is really simple. We're in a housing and economic crisis. Housing crisis, economic difficulties in Australia. There's lots of migrants. Migrants are the ones who are causing this. Therefore we need to stop immigration. It's a really simple story. And we know through evidence all around the world, through research, you know, long amounts of research, that when there's economic insecurity, when there's increased economic insecurity, people often turn against migration and they blame migration because bad political actors engage in this. And when I say bad political actors, I don't just mean people like Pauline Hanson Australia. I mean, you know, mainstream political actors often buy into that as well. So the story is often very same, the same. It's just Got a different person, a different person to blame and a different solution. But it plays out. And what we're seeing at the moment because of the immense stress that our world is under, that all of these, there's so many of these different things arising all over the place with different stories, different people to target, different complaints to be made. And it's creating this huge ecosystem of generally far right conspiracy theorist ideas. And the manosphere is one component of that, but it's not the only component of it.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
And it's an important component because even specifically talking about what happened in Australia last week, a lot of people who went to those rallies or a lot of organizers use social platforms, same communities that you mentioned, to kind of propagate their ideas and get people there. And just wanted to make this comment that I've been past few months I've been reading things about that this is story, this is story how men have become feminized. It's not really a new story. Even in the early 20th century in America when there was a rise of urbanization, again they had the same story that, oh, men are becoming more feminized. And when women came to work and asked for having equal rights or regulations in the workplace. And again, more interesting to me was I read an article about 17th century Spain, how their the power of the empire was declining. And they were in the public, there were preachers were saying Spanish men are becoming feminized. So it seems that whenever there is this. You're right, as you mentioned, there's this either economic or a kind of a social crisis, women usually get blamed for that.
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Dr. Simon James Copland
Even the witch trials. The witch trials are a great example of this witch trials. People think about, look back at the witch trials and think of them as being this kind of weird hysteria that happened at the time. But what was actually going on at that point in time. And there's a great book that Silvia Federici writes about called Calabarna, which talks about this is you had significant social change. That was the end of feudalism, the rise of capitalism. And people were scared and they were whipped up into a frenzy to blame women for a lot of their social changes. But it was also a way to stop, to stamp out the, the people who are speaking up. And people who are often speaking up were women. So they accuse them of being witches rather than as being people with genuine concerns who are fighting back against these economic changes.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
Yeah, you're absolutely right. You mentioned Andrew, Ted and also Jordan Peterson. And one of the reasons, I guess people like Jordan Peterson have become so popular is because they're preying on this precarity, this uncertainty that is surrounding a lot of young people. And they want to get into this job market, into this world, but they know that they have enormous challenges. It was way easier for baby boomer generation, but things have changed. And he provides an easy narrative, easy to believe I'm interested to. And they usually, you know, when I even talk with my progressive friends who are very lefty, but whenever it comes to feminism, they use the same rhetoric and it just pisses me off. Right. And it pisses me off because they are very well read people, but they still buy into this story and they usually come up with the same stories that feminists portray world even as if men have always had it easy, but men have had their challenges as well. They come up with male suicide rate that, that is not really talked about. They talk about educational achievements, rate of incarceration, that is all men. And they said that these apply to the pains of men are not really hurt. And it's all about feminism there. So what do you think about these sorts of stats that are thrown around that are sort of legitimate as well? But don't think you can pitch it against feminism in this case. But can you talk about this? And also you have this phrase in your book, mission to manhood. It would be great if we could talk about that as well.
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Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, well, maybe. Yeah. So the mission to manhood, I can touch on that first and then I can talk about your second part of your question, because I think it's related to this story that I mentioned that we discussed a bit earlier. And the mission to manhood kind of gives an understanding. I think I said that there's been significant social changes in the last decades. And those social changes affect a whole range of different things. And let's start by saying those social changes, many, many, many of them have been very, very good. And they've been very, very important. And one of them that I think has been very important has been the rise of feminism and has been the rise of second wave and third wave feminism that has really challenged a lot of historically misogynistic structures, the inequalities between men and women. And there is still significant work to do to break down, to break down and to create that equality and to create real liberation for women and for men. But the mission to manhood was this idea, this concept, developed the concept. I took it from a great feminist author called Susan Faludi, who actually also wrote about backlash, feminist, anti feminist backlash. So she's Very much linked to a lot of these stories. But she talked about how, particularly in the post war era, second World War era, there was a story that was told to men about how they should live their lives, how should they be men. And that story was what she called the mission to manhood. There were four missions that were kind of given to men. One was a frontier to conquer, for example, a family to protect. This kind of very stereotypical understanding of what it means to be a man, that you must be a strong out there, you must be out there in the public space, do all of these types of things and then come home and look after your family. And the mission to manhood was extremely problematic for lots of different reasons. But one of the things that it did was give men a real sense of social purpose, even if a very problematic one. It gave them a sense of meaning for life. And as Susan Fluti argues, and I agree with, and I argue in the book, what's changed, particularly with the rise of neoliberalism, is that mission has died, has collapsed, both due to the rise of feminism, but also due to neoliberal structures where neoliberalism created a world in which you became much more individualistic, the social connection became much less of a of importance. And it was really focused on how you can achieve yourself individually. So having social purpose. And one of the missions of manhood, for example, was a mission of brotherhood, to have brothers, to have people that you work alongside. And neoliberalism doesn't like that. It wants people to compete against each other, so you don't want to have a brotherhood. So things collapsed for a number of different reasons. Many of those things were good. It's good that we didn't have although obviously things still are happening in terms of the frontier to but frontier to conquer. We still have significant wars going on. But it's good that some of those ideas have broken down to some extent or have been challenged. But as Faludi argues, and I would argue it's been replaced with a much more shallow, antisocial idea. And this is what fellow calls an ornamental culture. And the ornamental culture is this one that's based on vanity, one based on boosting yourself, on self help, on competing individualistically, being your own person, all this kind of stuff. And it's a very individually focused vein mission for what it means to be a human. And this is one of the trends of what's changed for men, particularly that many of these figures like Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson have preyed upon. They've said things have gone wrong. They've often blamed feminism for that. But at the same time, they then engage in this story that kind of backs that up, that still reiterates this neoliberal idea. So Jordan Peterson, his whole thing, he, you know, he has his, his best selling book was called 12 Rules for Life. So it was like, here is the problem for men and Here are the 12 things you can do as an individual to solve those problems. The first one is stand up straight, there's clean your room, all of this kind of, you know, very individualistic ideas. So the, you know, just to reiterate, it's like, you know, with, you know, I argue that in the book that neoliberalism has caused a bunch of problems for men and for women and for everybody. But then the manosphere responds with more neoliberalism with more individualistic ideas about how to do things. It's because it's become, the people have become trapped in this idea that the only way you can solve a problem is individualistically. And the only way you can solve it is either individualistically or through your group, through your identity group. And so you have to do it as men or as women or as gay people or as people of color. That's the only way you can really collectively come together is through your inherent identity. And often though, it's come together through your inherent identity to learn how you can do things as an individual. So that's what the manosphere does, come together as a collective, join this group called the manosphere. But then the whole purpose, the only thing we teach you is how to then work on your own life, to go to the gym more, to learn games so you can pick up women, to get better diets, to give up vices, all of these things. And this is how you'll succeed in life. And it's a very interesting dynamic that plays out here, a very contradictory dynamic. And I think that's really relevant to the first part of this question. And I'm hoping I'm going to wrap this up up kind of nicely about these statistics because then what plays here is that those statistics you talk about, suicide rates, educational attainment rates, deaths in the workplace, loneliness rates. One of the ones I talk about in the book quite a lot is isolation and loneliness amongst men. Those statistics are all very real. It is true certainly that men are committing suicide at a much higher rate than women. They have higher deaths in the workplace. It's very true that men. There is a loneliness epidemic, both for everybody, but particularly affecting men. And what is Playing out, and I think it plays out on multiple sides of the debate, is that men are blaming that on women. They're blaming it on feminism. They say that this is because men have been disconnected from that social world. They've lost that mission to manhood that they once had. At the same time, I think certain segments of feminism, and I wouldn't say it's all of feminism, but certain segments of feminism, particularly sort of more liberal neoliberal feminism, is then turning around and blaming those things on individual men or on their commitment to these old ideas of masculinity. If men just gave up those ideas, then they would not have these problems themselves. So, again, they're kind of playing into this idea that the solution is individualistic solutions. And so how do we overcome that? How do we engage with. With those questions about male suicide rates, for example, or how do we engage with those questions about loneliness? And I would argue that the way we do that is to engage in the root cause of the problem and say, well, if neoliberalism is affecting men by creating this ornamental culture which is driving this, it also does that to women. And ironically, this ornamental culture that I discussed often was that women were the initial target of it. They were often the ones who should be considered to be vain and focus on themselves and. Or at least focus on their families, and that men have now been accepted, expected to adopt those ideas. If that's the core problem, why don't we band together and understand that's the core problem? But that. That affects people differently and people of different genders and sexualities, and it's about creating connection around how a core problem, a neoliberal, capitalist problem, is having impacts. And yes, it has impacts on people, individual groups, differently, because people are considered to have different need within society where, you know, capitalism needs people in different kinds of ways. So it impacts us differently, but the core problem is still connected. And that way you can build connection rather than assuming difference between these different groups. And I would say that a lot of feminist movements do that. Socialist feminism has been doing that for a long time. Second wave feminism did that too, to an extent. Not entirely, but they did that too. And I think that to turn around and say, oh, feminism is all the problem is really problematic because that it's. It's, you know, I think that there are things worthy of critique within feminist movements, but a lot of feminists are doing the work of trying to understand how there are core issues that affect both men and women. So women and men. I should, you know. You know, and that there are things going on for everybody here that we can, that we want to fix. And I think that if we can engage in that kind of way, it's a very healthy kind of way to engage in these conversations.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
And just to follow up on that, that one of the concepts that a lot of men usually get defensive is toxic masculinity. And more recently, I guess some psychologists have tried to come up with the idea of toxic femininity. But again, there's a lot of backlash because it's a, again, it's a patriarchal concept that is made. Now, I do believe that and I have a lot of, again, like I said, progressive friends who have a lot of sympathy with feminism, but they don't agree with the idea of toxic masculinity. I personally do agree. I think there is such a thing as toxic masculinity. But again, you argue that it's a little bit over simplistic and you critique this concept. And I really like the way you approach this. And I'm interested to know why do you think toxic masculinity is a little bit over simplistic and what alternative frameworks can help us to better address male grievances and I mean justified grievances.
- [34:17]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, yeah, it's such a good question because I think it's also how do you engage in the poor behaviors that men do engage with and how do we engage with the question about why men are often engaging with those poor behaviors more than women or non binary folks or trans folks, and domestic violence being the obvious case there, where no matter what a men's rights activist says, men engage in domestic violence more. That is very clear, the statistics are very clear around that. So toxic masculinity, it's, it's good you asked this question. I'm writing about this at the moment for, for a different piece and I. So it's been leading me to think about it quite a, quite a bit. Toxic masculinity has some good value. It has some good value in the way that it as a term and the way that you can use it to create a simplified conversation about behaviours that are unhealthy, that are unhealthy, both for. That are unhealthy for women. So behaviours that men engage with that are unhealthy for women, that are unhealthy for men and they're unhealthy for society as a whole. And it's reasonable, I think, to be calling out how do we engage in those behaviors and to call out the fact that the idea, for example, that violence is always a solution. The idea that men should be inherently stoic, should be always bottling up their emotions. These kinds of ideas that are embedded within men are problematic. And then we want to challenge them and we want to challenge men to engage with those, to change, to engage with and change those behaviors. The problem with toxic masculinity as a term and the simplified nature of it is that even though it's often claimed to not be used in this way, what it suggests is that there are inherent traits that exist within mental that are inherently toxic and that those traits, that, what's all that's happening here is that there are cultural factors, you know, a weird culture that's, that's, that's, that's telling men that those traits, they should, they should, that they should engage in those traits a lot more than other traits. And there's a couple of problems with that. First of all, it assumes that there is, it buys into this difference, this inherent difference between men and women by assuming that there are inherent traits within men that don't necessarily exist within women and that, that, that's a problematic process. And even the idea of the concept of toxicity suggests some sort of illness that exists within men. But I think more deeply it ignores a lot of the material realities that can underpin why masculinity is assumed to be the way it is and kind of has this sort of surface analysis of looking at the culture rather than looking at this kind of deeper understanding about why masculinity is it as it is, but also why masculinity changes over time and place and location and history and all of these types of things. And this is, this is one to pull out masculinity changes over time and place in history. Very clearly it's understandings of masculinity are very different in Australia to other parts of the world. Understanding of masculinity is very different in white Australia compared to aboriginal Australia to converge to different migrant communities. And so if we were to assume that there's just this cultural hegemonic culture that is impinging on everybody, as I think toxic masculinity does, then masculinity would play out very similarly. This toxic masculinity play out very similarly amongst all men, but it doesn't do that. And there are relational things that are going on. There are material realities, whether it's, you know, it could be the reality of poverty, could be the reality of access to alcohol and drugs, it could be the reality of gaming and gambling, which are all shown to have, for example, strong correlational causal links with domestic violence. And when you ignore these material realities, all you're doing is saying that what's going on here is that the culture is bad and that's the only thing we should be focused on. And so the impacts of that can be. And we've seen this play out in the domestic violence debate when you focus only on toxic masculinity. A lot of the critique now of, for example, Australia's response to domestic violence is that we are only focusing on how to change toxic masculinity because we're only thinking about it as a cultural problem. And a lot of those material challenges, the challenges of alcohol, of drugs, of homelessness, of gambling addiction, which all have links to domestic violence, they're all being ignored. And in fact, you have situations where alcohol companies are actively lobbying against restrictions that have been proven to show, proven to reduce impacts of domestic violence. And we're not talking about banning alcohol, we're talking about like reducing the access of alcohol in drive throughs, the time limit. So you can't go and buy alcohol at midnight through a drive through or through delivery services. That is shown to reduce the levels of domestic violence very clearly. But alcohol companies can lobby against that because as you can say, it's only the culture, it's only toxic masculinity. We just have to deal with the culture here. And so toxic masculinity as it's used often ignores it focuses on male individual behavior, but doesn't engage with this kind of broader material realities that can play out and can leave us in a really narrow, a narrow way to approach an issue, to think about an issue and to engage with the issue. And I think that's why I don't like to use it.
- [39:35]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And again, your response just goes to show how important the material condition is and economy as well, because lots of these issues are interrelated and they cannot simply focus on changing the culture. It's impossible to do that without really addressing other causes. But again, it gets you into trouble if, you know, if you're a politician and you want to lobby against the profits of a multibillion dollar industry such as Alcor. Remember there was the same story, I guess, about tobacco industry, you name it.
- [40:06]
Dr. Simon James Copland
In Australia at the moment we're having big debates about the gaming industry. And one of the things I got really furious about last year, for example, was when the Australian Football League, the AFL was they did a round where all of the teams before a game, they had a minute silence for the victims of domestic violence. But that industry, the AFL, makes millions and millions, possibly more from gaming profits. And the linkage between access to gaming and domestic violence is really strong, like really high. And so you can have a huge industry, the AFL is a huge industry on one side saying they're caring about this and men should be better and men should step up, up while actively taking money from companies that profit, that drive this crisis. And so the problem with this, when we focus only on culture is that you lose this understanding of the material realities. And in turn, companies can get away with doing stuff that drives a crisis. That drives a crisis, but says, oh, but it's okay, we've got educational programs and we've got cultural training for our staff because that's the only way, that's the only problem here.
- [41:19]
Morteza Hajizadeh
You're right. And they don't really go far to change the. And a lot of people even feel was talking to Cordelia Fine, you may know her, she wrote a book called Patriarchy. So in the part of that book, I work in an organization where I have to go through that kind of, you know, sexual harassment training every year or so. And I have no problem with that. But again, when I was talking to the leftist friends of mine who are against identity politics, one thing they were saying is that, that in those tests it's kind of, there's something, you know, there that when I do the test I feel like I'm the perpetrator of all these sexual harassments as a man. So they feel threatened. And it was also addressing that book that I spoke with Cordelia. Fine. But anyway, I don't know why I talk about that. What you said reminded me of that. Yeah, Another question I have and I think it's kind of relevant again, what happened to Australia last week? I think we had the same anti immigration protest in England. But again, what's been happening around the world in the past 10 years when it comes to man sphere, I think the idea that men have been victimized, they usually, they're very, very, let's say, distrustful of government or politics. They feel that they have been lied to. They talk about the global is trying to take over the world and I have no idea what the heck that means. Globalist. And they also embrace this idea of nationalism, ultra nationalism. They, you know, clothe themselves in flags, doesn't matter what it is, and they call others traitors. They want to sell their country. So it's usually affiliated with this idea of masculinity. So why do you think Manosphere is Distrustful of politics at the same. And also at the same time embraces this idea of, of nationalism.
- [43:09]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, I mean, it really speaks to a trend that's happening globally, which is a trend of anti politics, people who distrust politics. And I would argue for very good reason. I also distrust politics and politicians politics, particularly since the rise of neoliberalism, you have people who get into politics, often with good ideas or good meaning, and then they get in and the risk system is corrupted. It's not doing things for real people. And you have a politics in which people, which is giving a lot of money to the ultra rich and where public services are collapsing and where people are facing, you know, can't get a house, people can't get access to public services, their welfare state has collapsed. So I understand why people have distrust in politics. I already, I have that too. And what's, what's happening here is that's playing people again. That's playing out in different ways. And a lot of the manosphere and the far right figures are doing a really, really, really good job of selling that government is the problem. And I think a lot of people have this experience of government being a problem and an increasing experience of that. And so it makes sense that people are. That that appeals to people. I mean, it really does. And in the manosphere, it's often very specific belief that politics has been taken over by feminism, that it's. Feminism is the thing that's. That's doing this. And then so women are getting all the benefits of government now. And you know, you see memes, for example, in which people talk about one I think I shared in the book, in which if a man, a woman can't pay for a child, she gets child support. If a man can't pay for child support, he ends up in prison. You know, that men feel this kind of disconnect, that there's a. These men feel this kind of belief that when you know that women get supported and men get punished. And to some extent it is true that men do get punished and. But everybody's increasingly getting punished in our society. So there's this kind of very specific belief that there's a problem with government, that it's benefiting women and not mention. And then on the flip side of that, however, you're right, you then get all these people who are draping themselves in here in Australian flags or in American flags. And what's happening here is you get a play, the play. What's going on is people are saying, well, I hate politics, but I still love my country. I still have this belief, this inherent belief in my country. There was a post I shared from the manuscript in the book where people talk about this actively and it says something along the lines of hate your government, love your country. And it's very much embedded in this often white nationalist idea. So particularly when played out in places like the US or Australia, that there was this great country that we had back in the 50s or 60s, there was a white country where men were men and women were women. And then what we just need to do is get back to that. That's been corrupted. It's been corrupted by these social movements, been corrupted by feminism, by gay rights, by the black, by civil rights movements, all these types of things. We just need to get back to that. And that's where often the manosphere becomes more embedded with these racist movements because it's kind of connecting what was life like when it was good for men, it was when it was white, when it was segregated, when men could work and women were at home with this kind of very old, racist, misogynistic, homophobic country. And they draw these very similar links between these two things. Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way with Expedia, she bundled her flight with a hotel to save more. Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You were made to take the easy route. We were made to easily package your trip. Expedia made to travel flight inclusive packages are at or protected.
- [47:16]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Recently we asked some people about sharing their New York Times accounts.
- [47:20]
Advertisement Voice
I would be very interested in having separate logins for a shared subscription. I'm 35 years old. I still share my parents New York Times subscription.
- [47:30]
Dr. Simon James Copland
I think if my teenagers were to.
- [47:32]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Have their own logins, we could share articles.
- [47:34]
Dr. Simon James Copland
It doesn't let us play the same games as each other. I do the crossword.
- [47:38]
Advertisement Voice
I do the spelling bee.
- [47:39]
Dr. Simon James Copland
I do the word all.
- [47:41]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Please help.
- [47:42]
Advertisement Voice
Having our own accounts would be amazing. My mom could save her own recipes. My friends could save their recipes. I want to get the weekly newsletter but they seem to always go to.
- [47:51]
Morteza Hajizadeh
My husband and then he doesn't forward them to me.
- [47:53]
Advertisement Voice
We both love cooking. I'm a 30 minute and under dinner girly. My boyfriend is very elaborate. I think him having his own profile would be great. We love the New York Times and we would love to love it individually.
- [48:05]
Morteza Hajizadeh
We heard you introducing the New York Times family Subscription, one subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more@nytimes.com family they usually sometimes exploit women as well. You know the Tradwise that you mentioned a few times in the book as well.
- [48:22]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:24]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And to me, what's interesting, I'm originally from Iran myself and I do, I've been living in Australia for about 10 years now. But I do follow politics in Iran as well. So still, women are still fighting for their sometimes from very basic rights there. But these kind of trends that you mentioned, you know, like in Australia back in 1960s, 70s, we had this great country, now it's been taken away from us and they usually have a lot of nostalgic videos, heroic videos they share online. Same thing happening in countries like Iran. And you know that there's a lot of economic grievance, political dissatisfaction, migrants in Iran, which is large, there's this large African community there. They get blamed and then women get blamed, feminism gets blamed. But sometimes it becomes really silly to the point it's surreal because I guess it's silly to blame feminism in a country like Iran for men's problems because women don't have sometimes the very, very basic rights. But it's a global trend, as you mentioned.
- [49:16]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah.
- [49:18]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And one I guess related to that is the idea of cool optimism that you think you've used it from Lauren Berlin, one of my favorite authors. There are real cruel optimism. So these manosphere promises control, clarity, maybe gaining the power back to men. I'm interested to know, how is it the form of cruel optimism? And you also argue that maybe punitive measures won't really help to address manosphere by completely banning them. Maybe. Or that's why I asked earlier, how should we engage with these discussions when people come up with these, these are statistics going to talk about this. Manosphere is providing kind of a cruel optimism. And why do you think punitive measures won't address the issue?
- [50:01]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah. Okay. So cruel optimism, for those who don't know it is the simple term is when you have optimism in something, but it's cruel because that optimism causes some sort of pain or hurt or is not achievable. And so it creates this cruelty. And I mean a classic example of cruel optimism is the idea of the American dream, particularly increasingly so it's a story that people are told. You can have optimism that if you do the right things, you will achieve the American dream. You'll have your white picket fence with your happy family and your secure job. But there's a cruelty in that because the American dream is not achievable for many, many, many people and increasingly unachievable so that people become deeply connected to this belief that they can achieve it. But then there's a feedback loop in which it becomes extremely cruel and extremely depressing and because you can't achieve it. But often then what happens is people play out and say they try to blame others for not achieving this thing that they were told they were going to achieve. And the manosphere, I argue, so we talked a bit before about how there's a clear story in the manosphere. And the story is women are to blame for things. And here are the things you can do to fix that problem. And those things are self help. And I think I mentioned Jordan Peterson, for example, these 12 rules for life do these self help things. And I think it's a version of true optimism because those things are not going to fix the problems. That's the fundamental belief. Those things are not fixing the problems. And people talk about this quite. And this is where you often get a lot of nihilism in the movement, a lot of belief that things aren't getting better, things aren't being fixed. There's something so inherently wrong that it's just kind of stuck in this pattern, this treading water, this living life, but not really existing in life, but not really living it. And the manosphere cells make oil which they sell as a potential optimism to get out. But then it doesn't ever find that. People can never really find that. And so that creates this feedback loop where people get angrier. They often, sometimes they blame in the manosphere for that. And some people who get out of the manosphere because they realized how fake it is. But sometimes what happens is it then creates a feedback loop where they try the things that doesn't work. And then they continue to blame women, they continue to blame society, they continue to blame something thing. And that's where it's very, very cruel. And I think that, you know, going to your second question here and I think, you know, before I start talking about solutions, the problem when it comes to things like policing or things like banning groups, entire groups or banning individuals on social media, although I'm quite comfortable with, you know, banning Andrew Tate on social media or, or Donald Trump or you know, those kind of really high profile figures, the problem is it kind of actually can feed into that, those sentiments of being against you. It can really feed into this idea of a group of people being watched, being surveilled and not being able to live their life and it pushes people into darker corners that can radicalize them even further. And so it actually increases the cruelty of the world for these people. So we're going back to use the term cruel optimism. It increases that cruelty, increases the feeling that they've been promised something, this, this world, this American dream, for example. And then when they've been denied it and they've complained about it, then they just get surveilled and policed even more. And that can lead to this further radicalization. And that's been proven. It's been shown, for example, the impacts of anti terror legislation that really targeted Muslim jihadists. It showed that when people feel that extra surveillance, that extra pressure from the police station, it doesn't stop them from doing it. It actually pushes them into those communities further and they become more radicalized and more violent. And that's the risk that we have if we use police as the only solution to solving the manosphere. I think the clear caveat there is if the police are identifying groups who are about to commit in violent acts, of course they should intervene to stop. But we cannot believe that that's going to be the solution to stopping this community from existing in the first place.
- [54:12]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And how should the progressives deal with, or let's say not deal with, and maybe that's not the right word, let's say engage with disaffected men. Because when you talk about them, all these disenchanted people in the manosphere, they talk about the loss of, you mentioned the traditional role, now whatever that was, they talk about the traditional loss of traditional values. And that value is a word that usually comes up a lot. They talk about, about economic insecurity. So these are all legitimate concerns. But I feel, personally feel like I'm thinking you agree with me that they just direct, they misdirect their aggression. I'm like you, distrustful of the government. But my aggression doesn't go against minorities because that's exactly what those big lobbyists in the corporates exactly want to pitch people against people.
- [55:02]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yep.
- [55:03]
Morteza Hajizadeh
So how do you think, think the progressive movements can better engage with these disaffected communities? And I'm interested to know your ideas about identity politics as well. I'm like you, I guess, a progressive person, more on the left. There was a time I had a kind of roller coaster relationship with identity politics. I was a minority myself, so I was a huge fan of it. Then I became distrustful. I guess I'm balanced. I'm not completely dismissive of that, but I do See why some, even on the left, feel that everything has been hijacked by this identity politics and the idea of liberation. Those big narratives which we need, this new imagination, has been lost. But I think my question was, I went to hundreds of different directions.
- [55:43]
Dr. Simon James Copland
That's right.
- [55:44]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Tell us how we can engage with this dissipated community.
- [55:47]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Well, I mean, I think I critique identity politics within the book, and I think it leads to the. How do we engage with. So I just. I'll just touch on that really quickly. And I don't. So I think that the balance here around identity politics is. I don't critique the idea that we should have a discussion about how women, for example, and this is really relevant in this context. Women, for example, are uniquely oppressed within. Within a gendered society. We shouldn't have a con. We shouldn't not have a conversation. We should still be having conversations about how gay people and LGBTQ people and people of color and migrants are uniquely, uniquely oppressed in our society. But I think that those conversations, in my mind, are most useful when it links back and it starts to link back to the unique source, the ongoing source, and in our modern world, the source of a kind of inherent capitalistic society that has created, you know, that engages with patriarchy, that engages with white supremacy, that is linked together and being able to. Those identity movements work best when they can create solidarity between groups that can suggest that we're all suffering under capitalism, under neoliberalism. And it's happening to us in unique ways, but the root cause is still the same. And identity politics is worst when it doesn't do that, when it. When it targets the other groups, the other workers, for example, it's often. You're often targeting. And one of the thing I hate about a lot of liberal feminism is when it comes in and just targets individual men rather than sort of working to understand how their own structures that are oppressing all of us. And I think identity politics has done that quite a lot. And that's been where it's become really problematic. And it's actually very neoliberal in the way it does that. It's very much becomes about the individual and the group rather than about the collective. So that's that critique. And I think that kind of leads to, you know, how should we engage? And I said, you know, I think I said at the start. Well, I've said many times that what the manosphere does really well is it creates this story about what's going on in the world and what's. How do we. And what's the way to respond to that. A story that's really easy. And I think that the way that we need to engage and how do we engage with the men is to create a better story. And we have a better story, we have a more realistic story. But to work on a story that actually engages with people, I'd say men in specific in this case, but with all people, to get to those root causes and to get to those root problems. Problems. And part of that is recognizing, I think we fail at doing this. Quite. Not all of us, but a lot of people fail at doing this is, you know, going back to those questions you had about the statistics, for example, a lot of people, when those statistics are raised, they'll dismiss them or they'll put the blame back on the man who has raised it. But what I would say is that we should actually understand is recognize the kernel of truth that exists in those statistics. And the kernel of the truth is that there are structures. For example, let's talk about the statistic of workplace deaths, deaths in the workplace. There are structures in which our bosses are given leeway basically, to let people die in their workplaces because we do not have enough oh and S policies and enough enforcement. We don't have strong enough unions to make that. That they can't do that. But when you dismiss people, you're ignoring these other structures. When you're dismissing and just saying this is all because of your masculinity and your. Or how much you. Maybe you should just think about how you engage with yourself as a man, you're ignoring a lot of those structures. So I think that we need to be able to develop a better story, a story that identifies the real enemies, because there are real enemies. There are oligarchs who are running our society who are profiting off people's pain. And we should be naming those people and we should be identifying those problems and we should be creating a different way for people to fix those problems. That's to be part of a social movement that is more encompassing, that is for everybody to be participating in and which all of people's pain and suffering can be acknowledged, can be part of, you know, can be recognized as being part of this root cause problem. Now, that's obviously difficult, but I think we need to get away from the blame game and in terms of blaming ourselves and other groups and instead be looking at who is causing these problems and who is. Who are the actors that are doing this and to target them and create that empathy, that connection, to say, yes, I Hear what you're saying. I hear that suicide rates are really high. I hear that there are problems here and this is the cause of those problems, not feminism in women, but this is the cause of those problems. And this is how you could be involved in our movement to change that. Come and join my union. Come and join, you know, instead of. So when it comes, for example, workplace deaths, instead of saying, oh, how dare. You know, how dare you. Of course men aren't oppressed and facing more pressure. Well, yes, that's because the bosses get away with this. And you should join a union and come and join our union and participate in campaigns to fight against that. And I think if we can do that, I think that's much more powerful, a much more powerful way of engaging with these issues and can get people away from these awful false stories that are playing out.
- [61:02]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Yeah. And I just one thing I do like to mention is that when I was reading your book, one aspect that was prominent to me was that you don't dismiss the, let's say, the critics. You do give them enough attention. You talk about their concerns and grievances and you do acknowledge where it's a legitimate concern. And you also, when it comes to the other stuff, you also rightly blame some of the progressive movements that have given rise or have ignored, let's say, these grievances. So I think you provide a very balanced argument. And that's what I've been asking some of my friends who always bash feminism. Read this book. There's something for you as well that gives us better food for thought and food for discussion as well.
- [61:50]
Dr. Simon James Copland
No, I appreciate that. And look, I think that's worthy. We're in a difficult time in the world at the moment and we need to be thinking about, about, you know, what have we as progressives done well and what have we done wrong? And I think that there are lessons to be learned. And that doesn't mean that people who are engaging, you know, in those politics are inherently bad or they've done something wrong. You know, they've done things deliberately wrong or anything like that. But I think we should always have self reflection.
- [62:14]
Morteza Hajizadeh
You're absolutely right. And I think one great thing that left or the progressive movements was, was really good at back in 1960s and 70s was building those communities, engaging with communities which unfortunately we have lost. So that's important to be able to engage with people who are disaffected, to talk with them, to make them understand that you and them, you all share the same issues. But the solution is somewhere Else. So building the solidarity on those communities. Engagement is an important part of the solution, I'm guessing.
- [62:45]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, absolutely.
- [62:49]
Morteza Hajizadeh
I always like to ask a kind of a speculative question, but before asking the final question, I would maybe on the back of what I just said, how do you think we can build a healthy, inclusive alternative to this manosphere? How can we bring these people back and listen to them, acknowledge their problems and then engage with them in a more meaningful way?
- [63:14]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, it's such a good question and it's a really difficult one. But I think that the point that you raised before Morteza, about community is it may be a really important starting point. And one of the things that certainly happened is that under neoliberalism, community has been attacked. People where now, you know, community, there is no society. That's what Margaret Thatcher said. We don't just, there's individuals and their families. And I think that we should be thinking about how we can rebuild community. And I think there's a couple of important two things that I would say that are really important part of that, that first of all, communities can't just be online because online communities, online spaces are not designed for community. And so having face to face real communities is really important. And then I would suggest that also communities can't be homogenous. A lot of what a lot of groups are doing now is trying to build, let's build men's groups and let's build, get men together to talk to each other and talk about their feelings. And I think that that's also not healthy. I think that it can be healthy in some instances, but we don't want a situation where we just replicate this idea that men can only talk to men and men can't talk and white men particularly can only talk to white men. So I think community, you want to create diverse community, to introduce people to diversities of views, to diversities of experiences, to diversities of lives. And so we should be trying to do that as well. So I think that we can start with community, but I think then it's how do you look at those social movements and how can you be inclusive but continuously talking about these kind of root causes of these problems. And like the union movement is a perfect example of this. The times I've often found the most diverse communities, the ones that can really show me a diversity of views, but all with a single purpose is in the union movement. It's when I've been involved in unions that that often plays out the most significantly. And I. So that's, you know, and that, that highlights what are we, what are people doing there? They're talking about their material worlds and they're talking about the material changes they want to make. I think there are other social movements that are doing that at the moment. I've been really inspired by Mumdani's campaign for mayor in New York, which has done a lot of this, a lot of this work. They build community. They build community. They buil diverse communities may talk about these material worlds. And it's been shown to have results like they're shifting a lot of those demographics. People who voted for Donald Trump are now voting for Mamdani instead, which is the kind of thing we want to see happening. And so I think we can learn from a lot of those kind of campaigns.
- [65:28]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Quite interesting you mentioned that. I don't remember who I was talking to, but they also raised this exact same point, that Mamdani is exactly doing what the left used to do. And there's a lot for progressive movements to learn from. And I think Jeremy Corbyn in a way as well.
- [65:41]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yep, yep.
- [65:42]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Bernie Sanders in the US Yeah.
- [65:44]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Then the new Greens leader in the uk, Zach Polanski, who was just elected a few days ago. He's got very similar messaging. And I think that, that, that can, There are lots of, there are lots of examples of this. And it is, it's what the left used to do that was successful in doing. It's what it's kind of stopped doing.
- [65:57]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Yeah, you're absolutely right. One final question, and that's a speculative question. How hopeful, how do you see the future? How hopeful are you about things, you know, turn a more positive. Because we are seeing the rise of. So I don't know, the outlook doesn't really look that great. We are seeing the rise of right wing movements. I must confess that I was really, I was happy when the election result came out in Australia. Well, at least Australia did not follow the same suit in other parts of the world. But we can't be complacent because there's a lot of disenchanted people out there and you never know what might happen in the future. But how do you see the future? Or I don't want to ask a global question. Maybe in Australia, are you more optimistic about things taking a better turn?
- [66:44]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah. Okay. I fluctuate between real pessimism and optimism. And I think that the pessimism comes from seeing the rise of authoritarian movements. Seeing the protests that happened in Australia just last week clearly creates this fear of this, this, this nasty right wing Politics playing out globally and it coming to places like Australia. And then I got optimistic and it's kind of glad that I've already raised this. Radio get optimistic when I see campaigns from like Mumdami, from Zach Lansky, when I see Jeremy Corbyn starting his new party and, and the potentials of all of that. And I think that you have these, these, these, as I've kind of said multiple times, you have, have this rupture that's happening in our world at the moment and there are paths we can take and this is where people make their references to the 1930s quite a lot. But it was very similar in Germany at the time. In the 1930s, the fight was between the Nazis and the communists. The middle grounds kind of lost all of this. And we're saying, I think the potential here of that playing out again in this world in which you have two paths. Can we go down the far right authoritarian path or can we go down on a path that genuinely deals with the problems, a proper left wing path that generally deals with the problems of our society. And so I see the rise of authoritarianism and I get really pessimistic and then I see great campaigns that are responding to that, but not just responding to that, but creating different narratives and a different world and a different understanding about how we can live our lives. And I get really optimistic and I guess to finalise, to go to your question about Australia, I think what's interesting in Australia is that neither of those paths have become either dominant or even have yet become a level of prominence here. You know, we do have left wing parties, we do have right wing parties, but they're not gaining the same level of prominence in Australia. And so we're in this unique situation. But I don't think that means it's not going to happen because I think that the social, you know, I think we've been immune from some of the social crises so far. We did relatively well out of the global financial crisis, for example. A lot of the really awful anti immigration movements haven't hit here anywhere near as hard, partially because we're a big island. And so a lot of those, you know, we can control our migration system a lot more differently to other parts of the world. So all of these things have sort of helped, meant that we've been in a bit of a bubble from a lot of these international influences. But those international influences will hit us and they will hit us, whether it's in five years time or in 10 years time or next year, they will hit us. And so the situation we're in is we have to decide when it starts to hit us, what are the paths we go down. And I think that progressives in Australia need to do more work to create that alternative narrative, to create those all different stories to get people into progressive spaces before they're kind of co opted into the far right spaces. And I, it was very, you know, fearful about the protest to see that the far right is mobilizing here. And so we have to mobilize too. But it has to be mobilizing first for something not just to mobilise against the right. We have to mobilise for a different world, for a better world, not just to mobilise against the far right.
- [69:48]
Morteza Hajizadeh
You're right. Yeah. But I, I guess I'm, I'm kind of like you, myself as well. But when I saw for example, the Sydney march, the Sydney Bridge march, I was really, that was really extraordinarily optimistic.
- [69:58]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Amazing. Yes.
- [69:59]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Yeah. And I'm still a little bit comfortable that, you know, all the people who gathered last week. So it didn't, I, I don't really, we don't really have a statistic. I don't know how many were there.
- [70:09]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Maybe 60, but it doesn't wrote about that. Yeah, it's relatively small. If you compare it, for example, to the Sydney harbor, you know, that, that, you know, and particularly given I would argue that the, the Harbour Bridge march was organized with a shorter turn time turnaround and with less media coverage. And it got probably, you know, in Sydney it got probably five times the amount of people that those marches, those March Australia marches got into across the country. And so that gives me room for optimism. It's how do we ensure those people stay mobilized and, and on the left wing when some of these social crunches hit Australia, which they want will.
- [70:44]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Absolutely. Right. Yeah. I hope the left can learn the lessons and better utilize the fingers crossed.
- [70:50]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Yeah, absolutely. Yep. That's what we got to. That's what we got to do.
- [70:54]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Simon, thank you very, very much for your time. I really enjoyed reading this book and I strongly recommend this book to our listeners and viewers. The Mail complaint, which was published by polity press in 2025. Thank you very much for your time.
- [71:06]
Dr. Simon James Copland
Thank you. I loved having this conversation.
- [71:14]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Sam.