Gossip Girl

Summary

TRASHFUTURE Podcast — "Gossip Girl" (Dec 9, 2025): Detailed Summary

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Episode Overview

In this episode of TRASHFUTURE, hosts Hussein, Chris, Ben (and occasional interjections by others) dissect the absurd intersections of business, politics, and media under late capitalism. They riff on topics from exiled political "femboys" to the inflation of meaningless prizes, the creeping integration of gambling into political life, and the normalization of reactionary politics in the UK via figures like Nigel Farage. Saturated in their distinctive irreverent tone, they scrutinize how society metabolizes the grotesque output of capitalism and power, with trademark surreal banter and sharp-eyed cultural critique.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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"Exile, Compounds, and Assad Femboy"

[00:16 – 06:05]

• Running Joke: "Assad Femboy" as a meme—riffing about Bashar al-Assad, now exiled in Russia, evolving into a gamer and, spiraling via internet logic, a "femboy" and eventually a trans girl.
• Visualizing a sitcom setting where Putin hosts a bizarre compound of exiled Western embarrassments (Snowden, Gerard Depardieu, Jan Marsalek, and Assad).
• Satirical guides to achieving "Assad Femboy mode"—making fun of aesthetic guides and internet trends.
• Jokes about custom gamer gear and cat ear headbands being delivered to the compound.

"You're working out upper lip all the time, nothing else."
— Hussein [02:21]

• Reflection on who Russia grants passports to—e.g., Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit) wants one but hasn't gotten it, unlike Steven Seagal.

“I think I'm just very confused about, like, who Russia sort of gives their passports to... Fred Durst not getting a Russian passport...”
— Ben [04:03]

On the FIFA Peace Prize and Cynical Awards

[06:08 – 13:53]

• Parody news: Donald Trump wins the "FIFA Peace Prize"—hosts lampoon the process, widely understood as a shallow political gesture, comparing it to classic satirical references (e.g., Stalin Prize, C. Montgomery Burns Award).
• Critique of Infantino (FIFA boss) for knowing exactly how to manipulate Trump—showering him with medals and honors rather than money.
• Discussion about how political and international prizes are intentionally empty, slow to catch up with growing political absurdity, and how they could be used for further attention-seeking, e.g., making Trump "mastermind" of American Eurovision.

“There is no one as. As gay as Donald Trump.”
— Hussein [11:07]

• Notion that such trinkets and baubles are exactly what Trump seeks—mirroring his behavior and need for validation.

Stupid Prizes and PR Nonsense: The Alex Karp Neurodiversity Award

[13:55 – 17:20]

• Moving to corporate fluff: Discussing the announcement of the "Alex Karp Neurodiversity Fellowship" for "neurally divergent like myself," but the fine print clarifies it's "not a diversity initiative."
• Mocking the performative aspects of such programs and the tech industry's penchant for co-opting “diversity” language for PR.

“Yeah, it's the Alex Karp gamer autism rather than autism that causes you...”
— Chris [16:42]

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The Spread of Gamification and Prediction Markets in News

[17:20 – 24:59]

• Major news: Kalshee and Polymarket (betting/prediction platforms) partnering with CNN and CNBC to display real-time betting odds on news events.
• Hosts react with disbelief, then horror/amusement that their parody of news-as-gambling is now real.
• Explores how gambling has colonized every aspect of daily life, now infecting even how information and current events are consumed.

“No, no, that thing you were joking about is the thing that they're actually doing...”
— Chris [19:05]

• Critique of gamification’s role in the transactional, competitive turn in all relationships and news—how this risks incentivizing manipulation, distorts public reality (odds as "polls"), and opens doors for corruption.

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Nigel Farage, Media, and the Normalizing of Racism

[24:59 – 57:53]

Farage's Schooldays Scandal

• Discussion focuses on revelations of open racism and bullying by Nigel Farage during his time at elite Dulwich College.
• The hosts are unsurprised—seeing these stories as further evidence that the UK’s elite institutions breed reactionary ghoul politicians.
• Critiques the British media’s credulity, their late awakening to Farage’s obvious extremism, and their complicity in treating racist backgrounds as “banter.”

"It's not as though he was a racist bully who then sort of changed. You know, it's been a pretty fucking straight through line."
— Chris [30:19]

• Farage’s defense: Claiming "banter," denying intent, shifting blame to cultural context and the BBC's past bigotry.
• Parodies by framing Farage's racist past as "just bits," drawing a sharp line to how elites deflect meaningful scrutiny.

Media & Institutional Failure

• Observes how attacks on Farage now land weakly; what once could have been scandalous is now shrugged off, owing to decades of “mainstreaming" reactionary rhetoric by media and the Labour Party alike.
• They mock the empty ritual of asking for apologies, the lack of real consequences, and the tendency for right-wingers to flip the script (“Why don't you apologize to me for society’s racism?”).
• Draws out the perverse incentives of British media: how institutional gatekeeping shelter elites, and how anyone outside the bubble (e.g., Zahra Sultana) is automatically ridiculed if they point out racism plainly.

Broader Political Context

• Media’s shifting language on “deportations” and “white replacement”—what used to be unthinkable racist talking points now normalized.
• The idea that Farage (and the “Reform” party) succeed not in spite of their cruelty, but because for a subset of the public, making others suffer is valorized.

“You can build an entire political movement around being a cunt.”
— Ben [30:38]
“I can't believe my school bullies have unionized.”
— Hussein [34:13]

• Ongoing theme: media crisis as much as a political one—mainstream media types realize they've lost influence to the likes of Farage and reactionary YouTubers, and speculate whether to bend the knee or move aside.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Assad Femboy Exile Satire

• “Welcome to Nyet. God. Nyet Meyer.” — Chris [01:47]
• “Thank you, former President Bashar Al Assad, for being the sole purchaser from my Etsy store where I make Cassia headbands...” — Hussein [02:56]

Fred Durst & Russian Passports

• “Fred Durst not getting a Russian passport... But Steven Seagal is.” — Hussein & Ben [04:13]

Gambling in News

• “No, no, that thing you were joking about is the thing that they're actually doing...” — Chris [19:05]
• “It's not a gambling kind of platform in and of itself, but it is a reflection of the way in which the continued gamification of social relations, the continued transactional approach...” — Ben [22:32]

Farage, School, and Media Routines

• “It's not as though he was a racist bully who then sort of changed. You know, it's been a pretty fucking straight through line.” — Chris [30:19]
• “You can build an entire political movement around being a cunt.” — Ben [30:38]
• “I can't believe my school bullies have unionized.” — Hussein [34:13]
• “He has the personality trait of saying, gas them all.” — Hussein [41:23]
• “What made him as a teenager decide to sort of like brand himself as like this school neo Nazi.” — Hussein [35:53]
• “It’s like, well, if I have 28 witnesses saying that my breakfast racially abused people, I might start concluding that my breakfast was racist.” — Hussein [40:52]

Media and Power Dynamics

• “Are you suggesting that the British media ecosystem just kind of replicates the dynamics of the Dulwich College playground?” — Hussein [40:20]
• “A crisis of media that very sort of, like, predictably, Farage kind of realized quite early on. And now these guys are sort of playing catch up...” — Ben [54:53]

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Important Timestamps (Selected Segments)

• 00:16–06:05: "Assad Femboy," Russia’s exiles & celebrity passport jokes
• 06:08–13:53: FIFA Peace Prize as cynical trinket, Trump, Eurovision
• 13:55–17:20: Alex Karp’s “neurodiversity” PR award lampooned
• 17:20–24:59: Kalshee, Polymarket, and the gamification of news
• 24:59–41:47: Nigel Farage's school racism scandal, British media complicity
• 41:47–58:00: Responses, denial, media's collapse in defending standards, Reform party's reactionary success

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Tone and Language

• The episode is saturated with the hosts’ sardonic, surreal, and acerbic wit, full of running bits, puns, and clever metaphors.
• The language is irreverent and direct, frequently shifting between sharp critique and outright absurdist banter.
• Satire is used not to minimize seriousness, but to highlight the deep rot and farce underlying political, media, and societal failures.

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Conclusion

This episode of TRASHFUTURE sees the hosts weaving together a tapestry of late-stage capitalist absurdity: from the comically bizarre spectacle of exiled political outcasts, to the hollow currency of modern awards, to the sickly spread of gambling logic into news, and culminating in the stunted moral landscape illustrated by Farage's open racism and British media’s complicity. Through knowing mockery and incisive commentary, they explain that the current moment—of normalized cruelty and institutional collapse—is not accidental: it is produced, maintained, and excused by rationalizations in elite culture, media, and politics, all of which are failing at the task of safeguarding dignity and decency.

Transcript

[Hussein]

Because the thing about Assad Femboy, right, is now that he's in exile in Russia, he's become a gamer. And as we know, becoming a gamer leads to becoming a femboy, leads to becoming a trans girl. So in a matter of time, we are going to see the most sort of like mustache targeted electrolysis you have ever seen in your life.

[Ben]

Wow.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's like they've built a red light mask that's perfectly upper lip shaped that does electrolysis. But the issue is like, at that point, if you're Putin and you've got like your compound of sort of western embarrassments like Gerard Departieu and Edward Snowden and you know, now Assad and the rest of these guys and Jan Marsalek.

[Hussein]

Great sitcom pitch immediately. Oh, God, Snowden, what's going on in there?

[Chris]

You have your meeting with like your, you know, the gang of four and then you just notice like Assad, is that a tail poking out of your.

[Hussein]

Wow, your skin's looking really soft lately. You smell different.

[Chris]

Honestly, if it was going to be anyone, my money was on Snowden.

[Hussein]

The reason why he did all of that stuff was being the 1 cisgender employee at the NSA.

[Chris]

He's the world's first actual case of like reverse discrimination.

[Hussein]

Every day he got shoved into a locker by a bunch of 6 foot 2 women. And after, after a few years of this, he was like, I've had enough.

[Chris]

I'm walking, I'm out of here.

I'm going to Russia where I won't be bullied by trans women.

Welcome to Nyet. God. Nyet Meyer.

Oh, no. Hello everybody. Welcome to tf where we have just. Hussein has just detonated the phrase Assad Femboy on us immediately before we started recording.

[Ben]

Yeah, I found it on Instagram under a news article and I found it very funny. And it's been in my head all day. And so I made it into a funny screen name.

[Hussein]

How to achieve Assad Femboy mode aesthetics.

[Chris]

So it's like you get one of those guides where it's like, all right, so basically what you need is you need to do a long.

[Hussein]

You're working out upper lip all the time, nothing else.

[Chris]

You gotta be working upper lip, you gotta be extending your head.

[Hussein]

What's the opposite of mewing?

[Chris]

You gotta be meowing.

[Hussein]

Weaken that jaw, sister. Weaken that jaw. I mean, that is actually good advice for any trans woman. Anyway. Yeah, so I love the idea of the sort of compound of western failures. And just one of the windows just has like gamer RGB Lighting.

[Chris]

Hey, how come so many cat ear headbands are getting delivered here now that are in the strangest shape? These are. These are bespoke cat ear headbands for.

[Hussein]

Thank you. Thank you, former President Bashar Al Assad, for being the sole purchaser from my Etsy store where I make Cassia headbands for the weirdly head shape. Actually, no, there was another guy in Scottsdale, Arizona, but, you know, it's either here nor there.

[Chris]

No, he was just infiltrating.

[Ben]

I just remembered, and I don't know why this is, but, like, Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit has been wanting a Russian passport for a very long time, and he hasn't got one. And I'm looking for the reason why, and I can't find, like, it's just like, he's been banned from Ukraine.

[Hussein]

He's inspired by how the offensive in Luhansk keeps rolling.

[Chris]

Rolling.

[Ben]

Well, he was apparently trying to buy. Buy a house in Crimea and. Yeah, he was also. He had apparently also been invited to move to Russia.

[Hussein]

Well, they did. They do do that kind of, like cultural outreach, but it tends to be for the more canceled among Western celebrities. I'm amazed Russell Brand hasn't had, like, an offer that he's considered serious like, that.

[Ben]

He's.

[Hussein]

He's going with the Jesus thing. That's fine. But, like, arguably, you get a better quality of life just going to Russia and you get to, like, wrestle with Putin.

[Ben]

I think I'm just very confused about, like, who Russia sort of gives their passports to, because there are, like, they're giving it out to anyone. And that's the thing, because, like, Fred Durst not getting a Russian passport.

[Hussein]

But Steven Seagal is.

[Ben]

But Steven Seagal is also.

[Chris]

The other thing is Durst, like, correct me if I'm wrong in saying Durst has been trying to get one for a while.

[Ben]

He hasn't mentioned it for a while. But also, like, Fred Durst. I don't know if Fred Durst has become woke, but he is, like, he's.

[Hussein]

Pretty woke, I think. Yeah.

[Ben]

He's, like, got some fairly progressive opinions on trans people, which I only discovered because apparently he said them while streaming.

[Hussein]

Yeah, yeah, no, he's a woke ally, Fred Durst, and therefore not. Not welcome in the territory of the Russian Federation.

[Ben]

Yeah, he was also. He also had a cameo in I Saw the TV Glow, a film I haven't seen, apparently. Yeah.

[Hussein]

Fuck, okay. Yeah, I forgot about that.

[Ben]

Yeah. And also, like, obviously Limp Bizkit are having a bit of, like, a renaissance at the moment, you know, they're sort of running on a high in a way that a lot of the other new metal bands are not really able to do. So. Yeah, Like, I don't know whether that's related to the fact that he didn't get a Russian passport. And he was just like, okay, fuck it, I'm going wok.

[Hussein]

This is bullshit. I wanted my house in Crimea. There are now at least three genders. Yeah.

[Ben]

But it is this. I am just really fascinated about, like, who. Because I guess, like, when Snowden went to Russia, there was, like a period of time in the early 2010s where, like, they were giving out. He was giving out Russian passports to, like, Western dissidents. Right. And the idea sort of being that, like, okay, if you're, like, going to critique the west from, like, a national security point of view, and obviously there are, like, political reasons why that was afforded. Right. And there was a lot of criticism, leverage to, like, Snowden, et cetera, for doing, like, Assan well, for doing that. But now it's just like, yeah, if you're like a fucking shithead, but also you're not. You got to be a shithead. But you can't be too embarrassing. And that's why I'm kind of curious as to, like, is Russell Brand, like, too embarrassing for Russia?

[Hussein]

I saw a film forgetting Sarah Marshall. Very annoying.

[Chris]

Get him to Greek. Why is this?

[Hussein]

It's insults to our Orthodox culture.

[Chris]

So we got some stuff to get through. Today we're going to be talking about the Netflix WB merger. Or will it be. Maybe it's going to be Paramount and therefore another jewel in the Ellison crown, but we're going to be talking about that on Thursday. Today we have an update. Most importantly, this is so important, we have an update on the Orb Watch.

[Hussein]

It's an old music orb.

[Ben]

Music.

[Chris]

I'm so excited. Were you following who won the FIFA Peace Prize this year?

[Hussein]

You know, I follow this every year that they've done it. And so, as an avid FIFA Peace Prize watcher, I was not surprised to learn that one Donald John Trump.

[Ben]

I was going to say, I did make a big bet that Haruki Murakami was going to win this year. Disappointed. Disappointed. Me again.

[Chris]

Yeah, so that's right.

[Hussein]

Why don't they ever nominate any women for the FIFA Peace Prize? This is bullshit.

[Chris]

Well, I think the thing about the FIFA Peace Prize is that you have to kind of go on the campaign for it. It's mostly about what dinner parties do you go to in the run Up.

[Hussein]

It's like, do you like the 50 oldest guys in, like, the football equivalent of the Academy Francaise, like you? And if not, then you're cook people.

[Ben]

I mean, people sort of fail to admit that Donald Trump only won it, like, very, very, like, on a margin. And it was like, actually like a, like a vacuum that results difference.

[Chris]

Well, I think that the key is, I think, like, a lot of people are like, oh, the FIFA Peace Prize is so political. And, like, Trump only won because it was his turn. And, like, there are many amazing. Hold on, what do they say they give it for? Commit unwavering commitment and special actions. There are so many unwavering commitments, commitment.

[Hussein]

And I love special actions.

[Chris]

And there are so many that are, like, actually boundary pushing, that are done by, like, people who aren't. I'm just going to say it, older white men. Right. And they're always overlooked by FIFA. So what has happened here is Gianni Infantino, one of our baby.

[Hussein]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Johnny baby.

[Hussein]

One of our favorite European bald men. I would say, in many ways, Trump's most sort of high effort lickspittle. Right? Because, like, he's got a lot of sycophants around him. Of course he does, he's the president. But, like, for some reason, this one Italian man has just really decided to get his tongue all the way up there. And so on that basis has invented a kind of Stalin Prize, like a kind of parallel Nobel Prize in order to give to him. And I really, I'm not so interested in who won the FIFA Peace Prize this year. I'm interested in whether they ever do it again and who they give it to. If they do well, they're going.

[Chris]

They could. They have a number of things they could do. Right. They could be like, hey, the FIFA Peace Prize is directed at whoever we need something from. Like, it's going to be MBS next year, and then maybe Trump Jr.

[Hussein]

I liked it better when it was a more transparent outreach called the. The SEP blatter, like, peace. Suitcase full of Euros.

[Chris]

So. But what I think is true about Johnny Infantino is that he has absolutely nailed how to, like, get Trump to do things for you without necessarily bribing him.

[Hussein]

Yeah. Zelensky should be paying attention. He should be awarding Trump different kinds of Ukrainian medals.

[Chris]

What Zelensky should do if he wants to, like, you know, get America back behind, you know, back behind Ukraine, is he should just award Trump a Jason Isaacson the death of Stalin amount of medals for, like, specific battlefield actions. He'd be like, congratulations, Donald Trump, you are now the number one drone countermeasure expert in carcass.

[Hussein]

I think. I think if Donald Trump had the option to wear a Ukrainian dress uniform to everything he was going to from now on, he would do that.

[Chris]

What Infantino said, which I love, is, again, like, he knows how to talk to Trump, where he was like, this is. This award is being presented in recognition of his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world. Infantino then turned to Trump and he took the stage to accept the trophy. He says, this is your prize. This is your peace prize. There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.

[Hussein]

Incredible. Just lay it all out in front of him. I mean, I think the thing is, like, all of. Of this stuff, every kind of, like, international prize that's awarded is always, like, cynical, it's always political, right? Of course it is. But we're now seeing that politics is breaking down into the weird faster than those sort of, like, prizes and stuff can metabolize it. Which means, I think we can tie this into another example of that. The Eurovision Song Contest, right? Like, now fracturing, because the EBU sort of forced through Israel staying in it. The obvious answer, the compromise answer. How does Eurovision keep going? You give that one to Donnie as well. Doesn't even have to do a song, but I'd love to see it if he did.

[Chris]

I think it would not be hard to get him to at least be involved in planning America's entry into Europe.

[Hussein]

There is no one as. As gay as Donald Trump. You know how, like, they said of. Of Cataline, that he was the, like, the worst man unhanged, right? Like, Donald Trump is the gayest man unguided. And I seriously think that, like, okay, after you give him the Ukrainian colonel seat with all the medals and whatever, and we resolve the war in Ukraine's favor, some, right? The next thing, to distract him from doing any more evil shit, you just put him in charge of American Eurovision. He would love it. He would be thrilled.

[Chris]

He would. Every day he would show up wearing all of his medals and his FIFA Peace Prize medal, and he would honestly direct a pretty good performance.

[Hussein]

Yeah, I mean, it would be kind of like he's a musicals guy, so I think it would be. It would fall in that direction. But maybe that's okay, you know, maybe that's what Europe's been waiting for.

[Chris]

Look, Europe has long ago left its tradition of patter singing for, like, the avant garde, leaving it largely just to Broadway to carry the torch.

[Hussein]

It's True.

[Chris]

It's just like how techno bounced between Detroit and Berlin and Detroit and Berlin.

[Hussein]

To like, really become what it was.

[Chris]

Just like that. It's just like that sort of be a very distinctly European sound. Like, I think that this actually. I actually would award him the FIFA Peace Prize for finally, like, uniting the world by making European. Modern, European patter singing. But, yeah, they basically. FIFA just gave him the C. Montgomery Burns Award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence and the C. Jonathan baby Award.

[Hussein]

And the thing is, every other sort of, like, person that FIFA needs to butter up is too stupid to fall for this. Like, I don't think that the, like, you know, the cassowary royals would be like, oh, thank you for the, like, congratulations on most day laborers thrown off a stadium by accident award, you know, because they have stuff already, but for Trump, it's never enough. And so he needs the trinkets, he needs the baubles.

[Ben]

He likes shiny things. He's got, you know, he's got adhd. I totally.

[Chris]

Yeah, that's true. He needs his orb.

[Hussein]

I wish I would be awarded the FIFA Peace Prize. So, like, he gets. What does he get? He gets, like, a trophy. He gets a medal. Is that like a cash award with it, like the Nobel?

[Chris]

No, it's just a certificate. I think the certificate probably contains bribe instructions also.

[Hussein]

It's just like the first award that you have to give your Swiss bank routing number to accept is the first award that's actually.

[Chris]

It's always awarded to two individuals. It's awarded to the individual and an unrelated shell company. Ye. But also number one. The other thing is, though it's an orb. They've given him another orb. Football has given Trump another orb, and.

[Hussein]

Wherever he goes, he always returns to the orb. It's. It's most. The most noble form the guy.

[Chris]

The guy loves his fear, first of all, he does get enough of his fear.

[Hussein]

It's mathematically perfect.

[Chris]

You know, he then said he stopped. He's basically stopped every war that is. That could have happened. That was like, yeah, it was pretty good. He says different. So many different wars, we were able to end in some cases, just before they started.

[Hussein]

Well, I think the funny thing. Thing is one of the things he likes to reference for that is Thailand and Cambodia, which he did in the most kind of indelicate possible way of just threatening them both with worse tariffs until they agreed to stop shooting at each other. That might be cooked already. So another victory for the world's greatest peacemaker.

[Chris]

Yeah, Brilliant.

[Hussein]

Doing the Tom Lehrer Bit where it's like I stopped doing satire when Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Where it's like I stopped doing satire when Trump dishonored the FIFA Peace fries.

[Chris]

The moment that a conflict erupts between Cambodia and Myanmar. FIFA should strip him of the peace prize. You can no longer wear this medal. Anywhere you want to go.

[Hussein]

Only some of the time.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Yeah. But this is also another stupid prize, I guess in a segment I'm calling stupid prizes. This is just a little addendum before we go on to the main meat of what we're talking about. Remember how Alex Karp was.

[Hussein]

You mean visibly neurodivergent, you piece of shit. Like he was fucking ableist. You mean how Alex Karp was like visibly having an ADHD moment on stage? Just like all the ADHD moments I have where I like sniff a lot and talk way too loudly.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's like one of the symptoms of ADHD is you're more susceptible to head colds and so you're very sniffly.

[Hussein]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Though of course the. I should have seen it. I should have really seen that clearly what was happening when Alex Karp was unable or unwilling, willing to sit still, slurring his words and talking grandiosely about, I think about how everyone at the New York Times is fake to him then. Yeah, no, definitely. That is classic adhd. I mean, the thing is with teachers you have to watch in your class and like there are a lot of especially little boys will present this way where they will also be fidgeting in their chairs and talking about how, you know, New York Times, the convoy is very unfair. Yeah, exactly. And so they've said again in what can only be described as a succession level bit of corporate PR damage control, they've been like, okay, what are we going to do? Go on the offensive? We're going to say, oh yeah, well, Alex Karp is neurodivergent. And he went on to say in the announcement of this Alex Karp neurodiversity Fellowship where it's worth like $200,000 over a year, he says the neurally divergent like myself will disproportionately shape America's future and that this is a recruitment pathway for exceptional neurodivergent talent. However, the job description then has to state this is not a diversity initiative.

[Hussein]

Yeah, I love to I to get the Alex Karp brain goodening scholarship. Makes me feel great, I imagine.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's the Alex Karp gamer autism rather than autism that causes you.

[Hussein]

First question, let's see that Hearts of Iron mod list. Playboy.

[Chris]

Yeah, exactly. It's the Hearts of Iron. It's the Alex Karp Award for kids who can game Good. Not the Alex Karp Award since it's.

[Hussein]

Been awarded to Bashar Al Assad. Yeah.

[Chris]

Then when Assad actually came in for the face to face interview, they needed to be like, oh, shit. All right, you're too diverse. Yeah, this is too much diversity. We can't do it anyway. Yeah. So this is, this is stupid prizes. Two very stupid prizes that have been announced.

[Hussein]

Stupid prize. I like this one.

[Chris]

Oh yeah. Fucking love that. Another quick bit of news before we get into what is basically our main segment for today, which is something I've been meaning to talk about for a little while, which is of course going back to something I think we're just going to come back to again and again over the next. I hope not too long because I hope something happens that makes these organizations just not exist and that we get a like, I don't know, I want to say like full Presbyterian Temperance Movement about gambling in, in the sort of global north. But Kalshee and Polymarket are of course back in the news because Kalshee has a strategic partnership with CNN and CNBC that will basically like give odds on all of the news events that they're talking about.

[Hussein]

Yeah, great, Fantastic. I mean, to be fair, I was thinking for certain news events, like for instance, Trump, like part of his ear shot off the Polymarket sort of ticker on the bottom that's like, yo, did that shit really happen? Did they get him? That would enhance that experience for me, I think maybe also if we could get like a little like subway surfers vertical in the side of like all news channels and then also I could go on my phone during that, that would probably kind of complete the experience for me.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's like you should be able to get like detailed 26 way parlays on like how many bullets did the assassin fire? Was the assassin Femboy Assad?

[Hussein]

I don'. We have an answer to whether or not whether or not the Trump would be assassin was Femboy pilled or not. And I think that's a great shame. You know, this is what happens when you put a podcaster in charge of the FBI.

[Chris]

Yeah. The data according to Axios will be featured on CNN's air through a real time ticker that can be referenced across platforms when any journalist makes a prediction. Oh, really?

[Hussein]

I was joking. Okay.

[Chris]

No, no, that thing you were joking about is the thing that they're actually Doing pretty good.

[Hussein]

Damn. Okay, cool. Fine. That's fine.

[Ben]

Cynically, it's a very smart way for CNN because like the issue with a lot of kind of broadcast is that obviously they've been like hemorrhaging views, right? And the question has always been like, how do we sort of like bring more viewers to watch the news? Now you could argue, well, you could make the news better. You can make it like more informative. You could, you know, you could take your viewers seriously.

[Hussein]

I'm hearing all of that. But let me put this to you. That shit costs money.

[Ben]

Well, yeah, yeah, it's like, well, what if instead you turn everyone into Howard from Uncut Gems. Someone was like, yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea. And I think actually like, I don't know because like I was thinking about this today and I was just like, well, whenever like attacks happen and you're sort of waiting for information, like if you go on any social media platform, well, I guess like mostly like X or whatever, but like there's always that sort of period of time where basically you have everyone sort of speculating like what the race of the attacker was, right?

[Hussein]

Absolutely. Like that's they bullied the cops into releasing that information. So now we can put a Kalshi thing over that. That's like white.

[Ben]

Well, this is the end. Now it's just like, well, if you guess the ethnicity then you can win some money. And if you guess how many bullets.

[Chris]

26 way parlay.

[Hussein]

That' I nailed the precise like micro ethnicity.

[Ben]

Tajic calling it now this guy's like, he's Croatian. He used a crossbow.

It struck four people. One of them died, two of them had minor injuries.

[Hussein]

It's like weirdly like one guy put an outside bet on one of those people getting shot by the police by accident and that paid out big time.

[Chris]

No, it's crazy. I just didn't expect him to be like, I didn't expect him to be half bad ask.

[Ben]

And obviously this won't lead to any problems at all. This won't lead to like really bizarre things happening. But you find out much later on. And I'm not saying that Kalshi will do this, but I'm basically saying that like, you know, we've seen how pernicious so much of like the gambler gambling tech has kind of become. And we've also seen how permissive respective western governments have been about letting these gambling companies like basically take over what's left of public life. Like, I don't watch ads very often because, you know, I don't like seeing white people on advertisements. That was a joke. That's a joke. Just in case anyone wants to clip that. That is a joke.

[Hussein]

The studio immediately raided Von's notion of incitement to racial hatred.

[Ben]

But I was watching TV the other day and they're obviously advertising Sky Sports and stuff. And one of the ways that they advertise Sky Sports is that they have integration with one of the big gambling companies. And the way that they present it is very much just like, oh, if you want to increase your fun at the sports game, you can gam gamble. You can treat footballers like horses now.

[Hussein]

Cool. Do we treat horses?

[Ben]

Well, I assume we do, but it's like the way in which they now present gambling as sort of being kind of integrated into your social experience. And this is the way that I think that we should see Kalshi and we should see its successors and its competitors afterwards. It is not like a gambling kind of platform in and of itself, but it is a reflection of the way in which the continued gamification of social relations, the continued transactional approach to the way that we are encouraged to make friendships and relationships and the ways in which and facilitating that being manipulated. We're going to see. I really do think that we're going to see a lot of weird stuff happening partly as a result of gambling tech basically making every type of social experience you have one in which you can capitalize on.

[Chris]

Oh, completely. And the thing is that these companies are, and I think this comes as no surprise to anyone who listens to this podcast, these companies are incredibly political, nakedly political. Polymarket, for example, and I believe Kalshi as well, were, you know, basically putting their thumb on the scale of the New York mayor's election without lit. Without doing that in any kind of illegal way, because they would just report, oh, Kalshi. Odds are suggesting that Zoran only has an 8% chance of winning even after he got the Democratic primary nomination. Right. Is that. And to make it, you know, and that shapes reality. It's basically you're able to do polling, but by who owns the most cryptocurrency, because that's how these betting markets work. You're betting, you're doing predict, you're buying and selling prediction contracts with cryptocurrency, you're not placing bets on outcomes with money, which is how they're legal now. The only thing keeping them from being legal and utterly pervasive in the UK is the extremely powerful gambling lobby. That's it. That's all but because these companies are so political, right? Like, Trump Jr. Is a strategic advisor to Kalshee. Andreessen Horowitz is their biggest investor. Like, they are undoubtedly, like, politically oriented organization. They're also something you can do. For example, you can use Kalshi to bet on when the department of, like, the United States will next murder a Venezuelan fisherman. You can do that. And so what's to stop a, you know, someone who works at the Department of War in the United States trying to push the murder of a Venezuelan fisherman to a certain date so that some friend of his who's placed a very large outside bet on Kalshi or polymarket will be able to, you know, cash in. What's to stop that? Nothing. Nothing at all. Yeah. And like, there have also been wagers, for example, on when will the IPC classify Gaza as experiencing a famine this year, or will there be a mass population relocation in 2025? And so on and so on. All right. All right. The main thing I wanted to talk about today is a segment I've referred to as the Callow Youth of Nigel Farage or I can't believe the Send Them Back party is teeming with avowed rac. British journalism yet again wins the credulity award.

[Hussein]

Are you telling me that Dulwich College in southeast London is a place deeply steeped in racism and bigotry? Does that. Do you expect me to believe that that's plausible? That that's a plausible thing to happen in a private school in southeast London.

[Ben]

A place where, like, if you go into the main hall, because I got married in Dulwich College and like, you did, the main hall. Hall is just like, there are portraits of just like colonial offices.

[Hussein]

I once, when I went there, I once spilled a strawberry milkshake on one of those because my poker game got interrupted.

Yeah. It's a deeply strange place. Once again, fate has conspired to give me some insights personally into the news. And yeah, of course, he was a horrible Nazi prick at school. Like, he's a horrible Nazi prick now. You don't need that much investigation into this.

[Ben]

But also, yeah, also something to bear in mind is that he's still bullying children now. Because I was like, my, my initial thing was just like, okay, fine, like, not to sort of say that, you know, he was a kid and you shouldn't matter. Because, you know, I think ultimately that's up to people's discretion whether that's like, you know, something that they would, you know, whatever your sort of thing is. But the point is like when this story sort of came out and the thing that like journalists weren't saying is that like he's trying to sort of say he. On the one hand he's trying to say that like, oh, I never bullied these kids, it was just banter, et cetera, et cetera. But it's like he on like during this time where he's trying to defend himself and claim he's not a racist. He's putting out or he's like videos or reposting them anyway on like his ex account. And one of these videos is like a school in which like. And I think it's just like a primary school. I don't even know, it might even be like a primary like special education school. And like the kids who are featured in this video are like mostly like either South Asian or they're black, but they're kids. But the main thing is like they are kids and they are British kids. And he posts this video basically saying that, oh, is this what you want your schools to look like? Or this could, this is what our schools could look like, you know, without sort of obviously substantiating like, well, what do you mean by that? And obviously no one with high paid media jobs are sort of willing to ask him that. But it's like, yeah, you're still bullying, you're still racially bullying kids. Like you are now like what, fucking like 60 something and you are still racially bullying kids.

[Hussein]

It's always rough when someone peaks in.

[Ben]

High school, you know, and they just do the same thing. I have a buddy and I have a buddy from school who's very much like that. Like he kind of like has.

[Chris]

He's super racist.

[Ben]

I can't win the gay super racist. No, I'm just messing around. But he does have this like one line that he says and I'm not going to say it because like I don't want to out him to the two schoolmates of mine who listen to the show. But they'll know who he is. He'll just say this one line that he kind of, he came up with when he was 16 and at the time people thought it was funny. And we are now in our mid-30s and he's still saying it.

[Hussein]

That's right.

[Ben]

But with Nigel Farages it's like his line is being racist.

[Hussein]

Full force saying the word.

[Chris]

He's also very much still saying it just in ways that are, in ways that are a bit more media trained. So he can sort of just avoid being seen mean by anybody.

[Hussein]

Well, I mean, I think the thing is, right, it's not so much interesting to me, or it's not a surprise to me that Nigel Farage used to be racist, because, again, he still is. Right.

[Chris]

What's interesting to me is that's a good version of the Mitch Hedberg joke.

[Hussein]

Yeah, he still is, but he used to be as well. No, we've now been given kind of the imprimatur of the British kind of press, or at least the Guardian, sort of the last liberal paper left really, to notice this. And it's so obviously like a Labor attack line to be like, we went back and we did the easiest opposition research in the world. And I think you're deeply naive if you imagine that some version of this hasn't been sitting in a file for maybe a decade at this point, if not more. But now it's the full court press of we have 20 witnesses who saw you doing the racist shit that you do in public and every day.

[Chris]

Yeah, but in a way that hasn't been shaped to fit neatly into one of the acceptable wings of British sort of public discussion.

[Hussein]

Well, like, genuinely, I. I remember hearing about Farage in the. In the Dulwich College Combined Cadet Force, which is an institution that exists, like, on exercise, marching through villages in the Home Counties, singing, like, Nazi marching songs. I remember reading about that in, I want to say, private eye probably 10 years ago. I don't think it was that no one was interested in that as a piece of news. I think it was that that was being sort of kept for a later date. And the later date is now. Right. That it's gotten to the point where a reform government looks like a serious possibility. And so we're going to have to start leaking the stuff that we've been keeping back. And again, the least surprising thing in the world. But also, I think it's one of these things. I think it is another piece of Morgan McSweeney's Jupiterian mind. Right. Not to necessarily attribute it to him, but whoever it.

[Ben]

Right.

[Hussein]

Whatever kind of labor, right politics is happening here is, you really sort of attack him on this when he's sort of at his electorally strongest and he's going to flounder because of course he does. But there's a decent chance that what you just do is establish a norm that, like, yeah, you could just have been a racist bully at school until the age of, like, 18 and continue on that course for the rest of your political life. And that's fine, actually.

[Chris]

Also, there's this idea, right that it's like, well, it's not as though he was a racist bully who then sort of changed. You know, it's been a pretty fucking straight through line. All that's happened is he's gotten more refined.

[Hussein]

Yeah, he's learned that he can't sing the songs about the National Front in public.

[Ben]

We can do it in private. But also I think the other thing is like, my sort of, like, take on the whole reform thing in terms of, like, what it represents on a sort of political level is that, like, what Nigel Farage has basically done has. Well, what his big realization is that, like, you can build an entire political movement around being a cunt. And by that I mean, like, you know, you can sort of take, you know, things that we talked about on this show for many, many years, a lot of the time where it's just like, well, you know, for a long time, like, the sort of consensus in British politics is that, like, things cannot materially get better, things can only get worse. And the sort of, you know, the bit of rope that other parties will give you is like, okay, things might get worse for you, but there'll be someone else below you and will make their lives even worse. Right? And you can take great joy in the fact that the people that you don't like for, like, whatever reason are really, really struggling. And you know, in your mind, you can be like, oh, it's their fault and stuff like that, but, like, ultimately everyone way of life kind of is just getting sort of worse and harder to finance and so on and so on. What Farage, I think has realized will realize was that, yeah, like, you can sort of build a political movement around not just being miserable, but making other people's lives miserable. And there will be lots of people who will just kind of simply enjoy watching suffering, right? And in the way that, like, you know, he sort of brushed off his kind of like, you know, the sort of racist things he did in school. Not even by way of sort of even saying that, yeah, like, you know, this happened and I was young and I'm sorry. And like, the political environment, like, is one that, like, you know, I actually like my political movement rejects and, like, wholeheartedly. Because also to say that you reject it is to kind of be like, well, you're rejecting, like, your MP who just a few weeks ago went on TV to say that there were too many, like, non white people in advertisements and then had, like, members of the third party defending her, right? Including, like, runners in the press being like, yeah, actually, like, she was right. And what she actually meant was that, like, you know, DEI has sort of like, taken over everything and become too woke. It's like, no, she said very directly what she means. You don't need to sort of like. But address it in anything, you know, kind of like, you know, you don't need to try add new to it. She said what she meant very, very directly. And I think his big gamble is this very much like, you can kind of, you know, you can take people's anger and you can take people's frustration, but you can also take this kind of like the sort of broader political sense consensus that he emerges out from, where he's like, you don't actually have to make anything better. No one's asking you. No one's asking the Reform Party to do that. They are actually, if anything, the most fervent reform supporters just want other people's lives to be worse. They're obsessed with mass deportations. They're obsessed with cutting whatever benefits are left. They're obsessed with getting rid of public transport. All these things that will demonstrably make people's lives worse. That's what they're for. And his movement, in many ways, is the easiest vehicle in order to establish that. So, yeah, there is absolutely a through line that goes from his childhood up to now. But I feel like the way in which other media outlets haven't quite recognized what's going on is going to be like. I mean, this has sort of been the case for a long time. And so in many ways this is like a continuation. What I think is interesting is, like, maybe, like, 20 years ago, this could have been something that would have been a real, like, you know, it could have done some real damage to him. And the fact that, like, it's kind of been a bit of a squib. I'm not saying that it hasn't had any impact at all, but I do think that, like, the impact that, like, you know, the Labour Party believe it will have will be so minimal. And that's not even really because of, like, Farage's charisma or anything or the fact. Fact that people really like reform. It's just the fact that the environment in which Farage thrives in is one in which the Labour Party and the Tories and basically every party except for the Greens and maybe the Lib Dems are very much kind of like, they very much have a desire to maintain that.

[Hussein]

I can't believe my school bullies have unionized.

[Chris]

Also, when you read. Right. Well, the Guardian published An interview with another former people, Jean Pierre Lehoux, who claimed that he heard Farage making racist narratives, anti Semitic comments and singing gas them all at Jewish pupils, or chanting Oswald Mosley in the playground.

[Hussein]

To me, to be clear, when we. When like, a lot of this stuff that he's accused of is from when he was a prefect, mind you, in the sixth form and upper six. So like when he was like 17.

[Chris]

Or 18, he would sidle up to me and growl, Hitler was right. Or gas them and add a long hiss to simulate the sound of gas showers.

[Hussein]

And it's like, name, name me a single person who cannot envision Nigel Farage still doing that now.

[Chris]

Oh, 100%. But they also said that he was the leader of a group of teen teenagers who would wait for Jewish boys as they came out of prayers to taunt them. Or he would say, you know, to African students, like, that's the way back to wherever you came from, and so on and so on. And, you know, the thing is about Nigel Farage is. And again, this is where I think, you know, British journalism, it wins its massive credulity award is it's not just that that's part of the background, it's that that's what he's selling. It's like that's already priced in the idea that he's a. An end by saying, oh, ultimately, ultimately, the argument being, oh, he was rude, essentially, he was far too rude. Because that's what they. It boils down to, which is he said things he shouldn't have said. Not. This is one person who is at the head of a movement that genuinely believes these things and in order to safeguard everybody who lives here, they need to be stopped. But rather you said the no, no words. Right. Is that all of the thrill that people get from. I never want anyone to tell me I can't say the no, no words again because I'm 12.

[Hussein]

Yeah, the thing made him as a teenager decide to sort of like brand himself as like this school neo Nazi.

[Chris]

And like all of that is. That's what is being advertised. So what you're doing is it's like you're saying saying to someone they shouldn't smoke because, you know, the cigar smoke makes a room smell bad, looks just.

[Hussein]

As cool when you do it, etc.

[Chris]

Yeah, it may look cool, but it does annoy people around you. And there are a lot of people who are like, really? Both. It does both things. Amazing.

[Hussein]

So you're telling me you're triggered and owned?

[Chris]

Yeah, well, kind of and, you know, the idea that this is some kind of revelation, because as you guys were saying earlier, this has been known about in the public domain for a while. It's just everyone's started to care about it now that it's frankly too late for it to make any of a difference. And the fact. And also, like, Farage is still in some sense flailing, but in another much more real sense, actually, I think fighting back kind of effectively, because he's denying it. He's denying it up until the point where Basically, I think 28 of his former schoolmates came forward, have come forward and been like, yeah, this guy's a Nazi piece of shit. And then he said, okay, well, maybe it happened. I didn't mean anything by it. All of these people are politically motivated anyway. All 28 of these people were politically motivated. And then he said, I've never engaged in racist behavior with intent, which Dick Wolf, Law and Order racist intent. Let's make a picture. So he said, have I said things 50 years ago that you could interpret as being banter in a playground?

[Hussein]

You're on a. Dulwich College Upper 6th is a lot like a comedy podcast in that it's got, like, pace to it, and sometimes you lose yourself in the bit and you say something that's just the cheapest, dumbest shot and you don't necessarily mean it. And on that basis, I think I should be given grace. Listen, I am the only person on earth equipped to compare Dulwich College senior school and doing comedy bits and doing banter. Right. No one else has got. Has, like, come from Dulles College to being funny. Right. It's never happened.

It just isn't. It just wasn't. It never has been. He was just a fucking little Nazi.

[Chris]

Yeah. And like. And so he also says, have I said things 50 years ago that you could interpret as being banter in a playground that you can interpret in the modern light of day in some way? Of course. But have I been part of an extremist organization or engaged in direct, unpleasant personal abuse on that basis? No.

[Hussein]

Listen, you. You might have me bang to rights on this stuff. What about a bunch of other stuff that we. Harder to prove?

[Chris]

Yeah, you could never prove that I was in the National Front from the years 1976, 1992.

[Hussein]

That's true. We could never prove that.

[Chris]

Those are just random dates. I guess I grabbed that as a joke to lawyers listening. Farage also said, I've never directly racially abused anybody. He then, he's also fighting back. He's Saying it's disgraceful. He say. He's saying it's disgraceful to frame a question linking himself to dictator a Adolf Hitler. And it's like, well, hang on a second. You did say he was right. You linked yourself to him. The person who linked you to Adolf Hitler was you.

[Hussein]

It was disgraceful of him to do that.

[Chris]

Yeah, it was. It was disgraceful of you to note that thing I said. But that's the thing. If you are. And I think this really. Again, this is. I don't think there's a lesson for the left here, because this. You only get to do this if you're. If you're a Nazi, you only get to do this if you're very right.

[Hussein]

And you only get to, like, operationalize this thing that everybody knew about him but which could never stick if you are the Labor. Right.

[Chris]

Yeah. Because otherwise it's just like, oh, you think everyone's racist, blah, blah, blah. You think everyone's racist. Are you insulting his supporters?

[Hussein]

Yeah. Like, what if fucking, like Zahra say, for the sake of it pulling a name out of a hat, if Zahra Sultana had had, like, gone with any of this, right, as a real attack line against Faraj, the first response would have been been, who? And the second response would have been, oh, that crazy Zara Sultana shoots her mouth off again. Right. Like. And so too is anyone who doesn't necessarily have the like, admittedly waning and kind of farcical institutional power to, like, make this stick as journalism.

[Chris]

Well, and also, I think it comes back to the way I tend to see British political media. They're asking you. And this is more than, like, American political media as well. This is kind of unique to us, is their ask is everyone has a very set role to play, and the role of someone like Zara Saltado, Jeremy Corbyn, Zach Polanski is to be ridiculed. Right? Like there is to. Everything you say is to be treated with maximum contempt.

[Hussein]

Are you suggesting that the British media ecosystem just kind of replicates the dynamics of the Dulwich College playground? Why does. Why does the media resemble the school?

[Chris]

Oh, my God, I can. I can feel my hair falling out and my. And my. My T shirt becoming a touch turtleneck. So, yeah, you're. If you, as Zara Sultana or Zach Polanski, make this point, then you're. It doesn't matter what you're saying because you're playing the role of. Oh, you just accuse everyone of being racist. You think breakfast is racist, for God's sake. Right, yeah, that's. And that's your role.

[Hussein]

And it's like, well, If I have 28 witnesses saying that my breakfast racially abused people, I might start concluding that my breakfast was racist.

[Chris]

Or the other thing they would do is they would say, by calling, by saying this to him, you're insulting all the millions of people who vote for him by suggesting they would vote for an avowed racist.

[Hussein]

You've lost the argument here because you're not attacking him on his policy. You're going for personality.

[Chris]

You're going for his personality. He has the personality trait of saying, gas them all.

[Hussein]

Yeah, exactly. Shortly to be a protected characteristic under the ehrc.

[Chris]

If it's not. Oh, I have some stuff from the EHRC about this as well. I hope you're excited for that great Equalities and Human Rights Commission to do its job. So Farage went on saying, and the BBC was very happy to use blackface back then, not just in the black and white minstrel show they did it in. It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.

[Hussein]

It's. It's. This is such a. Like murdering your parents and then falling on the mercy of the court as an orphan. Right. Like, it was. It was society what made me racist. Which to an extent is true. Sure. Is the BBC racist? Yeah, of course it is. But, like, do we have the kind of common sense to know that the person saying this is a panicked, more racist racist, trying to, like, deflect attention from himself? I would hope, but I could be disappointed.

[Chris]

Yeah. Unfortunately, if you're ever going to have an audience larger than podcast, you just started doing one day, I'm afraid you're not allowed to notice that. No. Yeah, I'm afraid this is. This is kind of the limit. But he says, I can't put up with the double standards of the BBC about what I'm alleged to have said 49 years ago and what you are putting out on mainstream content. So I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did throughout the 1970s and 80s. And it's like, look, the BBC has a great deal to apologize for from the 1970s and 80s, a great deal, certainly some of its programming about who will fix it. But the. Again, like, he. But what's he doing? He's just going on the attack. And this is completely. They cannot metabolize it. They cannot metabolize it because their response to him is just gonna put them then in the. Okay, well, now it's time for the BBC to get made a mockery of and say that they're not in touch with the. With the country and time for GB News to attack them. There is no way, I think any of this was not obvious. No way any of it makes really altogether that much difference, except to, like, the, I don't know, dozen or so people who were wavering about reform support genuinely on the basis that, like, they have a certain immigration number they'd like to hit because they like that particular number. Right. There's no universe in which anybody cares about this because it's just another advertisement to the people that already like him. But asked why Faraj had not apologized, as he was urged to do on Sunday by the output outgoing head of the government's equalities watchdog, Baroness Kishwar Faulkner, Danny Krueger, the reform MPU defective from the Tories, told Times Radio that Farage contested the allegations so he can't acknowledge what he doesn't believe to be true. Asked about Farage's comments, Faulkner said she felt, quote, confused and disturbed. You have a situation where when you read these allegations in terms of what's attributed to him, it looks utterly ghastly on paper, but then you try to contextualize it and you think, this is 50 years ago. You know, young people say, oh, all sorts of things.

[Hussein]

I love Kishwa Faulkner's peace, love and understanding turn. I just think it's in many ways one of the crueler things that Nigel Farage has done lately, it seems, since getting out of school, is to take Baroness Faulkner away from her true love of foaming transphobia. That's what she wants to be talking about. And you're making her deal with actual racism just because she was in charge of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. What does this have to do with equality? Equality and human rights. Equality and human rights is about gender policing the bathrooms.

[Chris]

Yeah, exactly. This is not about whether or not the. There is no commission and there should not ever be a commission, I guess, to figure out if the putative next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ever had a gas them all phase.

[Hussein]

Nah, nah, I wouldn't think so. I don't think that really relates to equality or human rights.

[Chris]

No. Or nor commissions even. No, he said there was, however, she said, an element that she did not understand. The one thing that sadly confuses me about him and I hear his contextualization of it all. Why can't he just offer an apology for any distress he would have caused, even if he genuinely didn't mean it?

[Hussein]

I wonder, could it be because he means it and he likes it and he's going to keep doing it. I mean, just a thought. I appreciate the sort of, like, responsibility and the kind of caution here. Again, to have been brought in as a kind of, like, hired gun for an institution to reconfigure British society in a way that is, like, deeply insane to any person who ever has to implement it. Of being like, you have to, like, kick trans women out of all of your shit to then be like, oh, I couldn't, you know, possibly impugn Nigel Farage. It's, you know. But I have concerns.

[Chris]

Yeah. It's like, she's, she's being like, nigel, I am prepared to maximize the amount of benefit of the doubt that you could get.

[Hussein]

Yeah. In many ways it's like, as your lawyer, I am advising you to, like, do a full, wholesome apology. And for some reason he won't do it.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Hussein]

Or, or.

[Chris]

And then Stephen Pollard has written that, of course, Nigel Farage is not an extremist. He says it's important to remember. Stephen Pollard calls.

[Hussein]

I understood anti Semitism to be a kind of grievous poison that is, like, omnipresent in British political life. And, you know, obviously we had to sort of like, get rid of Corbyn on that basis because, you know, he could have been Prime Minister, for God's sake. Right. And if you're going to be maybe Prime Minister, you should have. You should be above suspicion. Right. And not only do you have to have a sort of guarantee to people that you're not personally anti Semitic, but also that you won't tolerate those who are. Right. And so in that case, on that basis, like, not being sort of effective enough at rooting out anti Semitism in the Labour Party meant that he could never be Prime Minister. But reform, though, I understand they're fine.

[Chris]

Right, let me see. I'm sure Stephen Pollard has a pretty good argument for this. Let me see what he says. He says I was at a London private school at the same time. Anti Semitic abuse was common. One classmate, now a City bigwig who is doubtless proud of his institution's commitment to diversity, smeared a pork, pork in my gym bag. Did. The insults and abuse upset me initially, but it was soon so common that it became something I barely noticed.

[Hussein]

And the point of this then is bygones are bygones. Boys will be boys.

[Chris]

Yeah. He. Boys will be boys. Is it? He says casual racism was normal. We've moved on along then and rightly look back in horror at behavior that.

[Hussein]

Was normal, but not too much horror, not enough horror. That would sort of demand that he, he, you know, resign around a.

[Chris]

Well, also, like you're looking, I guess there's like a kind of energy field around, I want to say 1996, maybe 2000, where anything from before then is the past and we look back on the past. But that's different people than now. Right? That's. That's past Nigel Farage, who was a past person and this is present Nigel Farage, who's a different guy. They're just similar.

[Hussein]

That clears it all right up for me.

[Ben]

Yeah. And there's also like a type of anti Semitism that is like, you know, purely fixed in the past and like something that shouldn't be taken seriously, while at the same time there is another type of antisemitism, which is an ancient prejudice that can only sort of truly be understood by walking through whitechapel market.

[Hussein]

Well, Nigel Farage isn't Muslim enough to be inherently anti Semitic. Right. It's not in his DNA. That's a step away from the argument here. Like, I think it's like implicit. Implicit in it is, well, no, he's not like anti Semitic as like a kind of like a racial trait. It's just like a quirk that he had.

[Chris]

Well, it was a quirk of the time because, you know, and also, like, the thing is, if you were to imagine, I don't know, future Farage, you know, the future Farage who will be like, you know, the leader of whatever version of reform has like its sort of horrible old guy if he's in sixth form right now, maybe Dulwich College even, you know, probably what he's doing is he might be like, you know, taunting students about Gaza, for example. Because what you're trying to do, and I think what you're trying to do in that case is you are trying to be maximally horrible to people you think are beneath you.

[Hussein]

You know, And I mean, I will say Darwish College, great place to learn to do that really sort of inculcates you with a lot of history and tradition to really just facilitate those interactions.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And so, you know, I mean that what I'm. What I'm driving at here as well is like he might have just grabbed that like gas them all. Anti Semitism because it was in the currents of the air at the time in the same person now would probably be a sort of virulent Islamophobe.

[Hussein]

I mean, like, it was a. It was of a time. This is the point that I will give to Stephen Powell. It was all the time when every like white person who was famous had a flirtation with the National Front Bar, the Clash, like David Bowie was getting racist with it. It was a weird time. But that's not, that's opposite of an excuse, that's an indictment.

[Chris]

And also it's like whatever direction it went, it bespeaks ultimately again the thing that's really there, which is not about not saying the bad words, but that's about genuinely your belief that there are people who can be easily marked out, who are hierarchically lower and therefore who should be abused or who should be hurt by the law or whatever. Right, yeah.

[Hussein]

Or just humiliated. I would say that's the key thing is I would take it as a kind of like attack on dignity.

[Chris]

Let's go back to Paul. Maybe Pollard pulls it out, maybe he turns it around. Are we really going to judge and damn people based on awful things they said when they were children? You know, 18 year old children who've not really changed that much except in tone. Especially when those things were said at a time when sensitivities were very different. It's as if we consider Keir Starmer to want Britain to be a Soviet totalitarian state because he holidayed in Czech Czechoslovakia as a teenager. Yeah, that's exactly right.

[Hussein]

That's the thing that is said of Keir Starmer and it's, it's like similarly cooked. I, this is, I, I don't know. The whole thing is infuriating because as I said, you don't need to sort of go back very far in the archives to be like, Nigel Farage is a racist. Right. All this is doing, this is like background information about his like racist origin story. It's like we've completed his racist loyalty quest and now we get like sort of racist law dump. And it's like none of that should even be important because he should be unelectable based on the things that he says and believes now. And the reason why he isn't is because of decades of compromise in his favor.

[Chris]

And Pollard goes on. It's clear what's going on here. An attempt to portray Farage is far right. Yeah. You know, it's crazy. This attempt to portray the Hitler was right guy is far right crazy.

[Hussein]

I have, I have this, I have this attempt to portray the sky as being blue.

[Chris]

I'm attempting to locate this fork in this kitchen and thus reform as some kind of British version of the French National Rally.

[Hussein]

That's interesting. Are those guys hanging out together? Are they friends? Are there a bunch of photos of Them, like, is that. Like, is there an increasingly obvious sort of international, like a kind of fascist international that they're both in? Because if there was, then it would be kind of an apt comparison, I would say.

[Chris]

I mean, look, Stephen Pollard is a very busy journalist. Do you think he has time to Google?

[Hussein]

That's true. That is true. We're all busy.

[Chris]

I get that.

[Ben]

Yeah. Is he still on Hinge? Is he still dating?

[Hussein]

I think he had a rough time on the apps, you know, which is not. I get it.

[Chris]

You know, for anyone who may have forgotten this, Stephen Pollard wrote what is, I think the canonical, the whiniest fucking.

[Hussein]

Article I've ever read. There are too many anti Zionists on Tinder and Hinge for me to get a date.

[Chris]

Yeah, it is. This is up there in like the article pantheon of whiny conservative articles. He says, whether you agree with reform or oppose everything about it doesn't alter the fact that it is a mainstream party led by a mainstream politician with mainstream supporters.

[Hussein]

It has been mainstreamed. It is not mainstream by accident. It didn't fall on the earth like a meteor.

[Ben]

Also, when it was all this stuff was being leveraged on Corbyn, it's like. Well, Labour were a mainstream party.

[Hussein]

Yeah. Would you say that Corbyn supporters had very real concerns and it was insulting to them to this dismiss Corbyn off of like sort of personal attacks?

[Chris]

No, we were activists or worse, extremists.

It's so easy. It's so easy to not know the rules. But, you know, this is thankfully, thankfully we have, you know, Stephen Pollard who, you know, taking time off of his busy getting hedgehul to. To, you know, give us a little lesson on the.

[Ben]

On who.

[Chris]

Who's mainstream and who's not. Any case. Any case. All of this is to say it's always strange sort of doing like 30 minutes of discussion on something where the conclusion is this probably isn't anything right, because it's like taking a very long journey to nowhere. But rather it feels a lot of the same. Gullible columnists probably feel as though this is something. They feel as though this is meaningful and it's just another bit of the copper wire getting yanked out of the God they want to Utah and talk about the instit institutions, the sort of general levels of social trust, the idea that there should be any kind of approaching a standard in public life. These like liberal pillars that have gotten just demolished one after the other, partly because they have no material basis, but also partly because, well, the sort of erstwhile. Liberals of the last sort of what, 15, 20, 25 years, you can start counting for more or less whenever you want, have decided that it is inconvenient that these things should be in public life, have made no case for them because they only want to turn to them when convenient. And I'm sorry, just because it's convenient for you to use them now they have been neglected because you are all complete morons who are utterly short termist. Sorry.

[Ben]

I think the other aspect of this is also like lots of kind of media types who are really trying to sort of really trying to think about what their place will be in a British politics increasingly defined by people like Farage and defined by reform. We've seen how much language has kind of changed, especially around migration. The fact that you have so called respected kind of analysts and political commentators and stuff who go on national TV and national radio and sort of very openly talk about massless support for mass deportations or expressing concerns about white replacement in London or whatever. Right. These are things that were really kind of untenable until quite recently. And it does sort of reflect. I mean people will sort of say that oh, this reflects reforms, dominance in politics. But again, I kind of think that. But actually the reverse is true. Reform is sort of a response to again a very hostile and aggressive political environment that has very much been defended by the mainstream political parties. I would probably wager post 2008, but particularly in recent years and particularly after Brexit, where the failures of Brexit, the failures of the exiting the European Union were constantly. The blame of that was constantly put on various groups who prevented Britain from being, becoming this kind of mass force afterwards, if they sort of believe that or not. I mean also it's reflective of kind of inequality at its sort of highest point historically and the ways in which that is continuing to be justified. Reform is a response to all of these things. But I think one of the this is something that media types like mainstream media types don't really understand or they sort of have an unwillingness to understand. But that's partly because British media is so insular and it's so kind of very much about who you know and what parties and what dinners you go to that there's no actual incentive to really interrogate the system in which journalists kind of operate in this country. And I think all of that is sort of important because I think Farage is like the one who really recognizes that and has spent a very long time sort of like building or at least sort of contributing to like an alternate media system that is, like, a lot more influential than your sort of mainstream newspaper columnists and your, you know, your, like, BBC news reports and stuff. And I think what we're going to see and what we're kind of continuing to. We're going to continue to see are lots of, like, mainstream media types either trying to figure out whether they have a place in this new media economy where they are far less influential than, you know, the reactionaries on GB News. And, you know, they're sort of increasingly radical, like younger conservative talking heads who they sort of let run rampant on YouTube or whether, like, you know, I guess the choice that they have to make is like, well, do you sort of bend the knee for Farage? Which I think many of them will do. Some already have, but I think we'll see more of that kind of coming in the next kind of few years. Or will they sort of bow out because they kind of recognize that there is no place for them anymore. And so this is very much like a crisis of media that very sort of, like, predictably, Farage kind of realized quite early on. And now these guys are sort of playing catch up while also sort of being in denial about what's going on.

[Hussein]

Oh, well, I think they sound pretty well set up for it, so all the best, guys.

[Ben]

Look, I'm sure. I'm sure Rory Stewart's got something up his sleeve, like he knows, you know, he knows what he's doing.

[Hussein]

Fine.

[Chris]

Anyway, I think that's probably about time for us today, but I want to, of course, thank everybody for listening. Remind you that there will be another episode this week on the Patreon, where I hope to be discussing the Netflix Warner Brothers or not deal. So do check that out in the.

[Hussein]

Process of scheduling the Next Left on Red with Matthew Lubchansky about Matthew Lubchansky's graphic novel Simplicity, which you should buy. Spoilers. It's very good. We'll talk about it soon.

[Chris]

And also, sorry, we know it hasn't been out recently. There's been a lot of things going on, but we are going to put it out.

[Hussein]

How to Read again.

[Chris]

Yeah, sorry. All right. All right, cool. All right, see you there. Bye, everyone.

[Ben]

Bye.

[Hussein]

Bye.