Responding to Netanyahu Interview Critics - podcast episode cover

Responding to Netanyahu Interview Critics

Aug 29, 20251 hr 20 min
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Summary

Konstantin and Francis dissect the intense backlash to their Benjamin Netanyahu interview, highlighting how new media often fosters echo chambers and uncritical responses. They argue for a nuanced, challenging journalistic approach over virtue signaling, emphasizing the dangers of emotional reasoning and historical illiteracy in public discourse, particularly concerning the complexities of the Israel-Gaza conflict and the unique challenges posed by groups like Hamas.

Episode description

Francis and Konstantin discuss the reaction to their interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. | We use Ground News to escape the echo chamber and stay fully informed. Go to https://ground.news/triggernometry to save 40% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan.


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Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians.


00:00 Introduction

06:26 Contradictory Criticisms On The Benjamin Netanyahu Interview

18:18 The Effect Of Social Media On How People View War

28:13 Discussing Comments On The Breaking Points Reaction Video

53:14 The Problems With Journalism

01:03:39 Why Is This Continuing?

01:06:44 One Of Liberalism's Big Flaws

01:10:30 Antisemitism Throughout The Middle East

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Transcript

Introduction

They position our interview, which they haven't watched. Yeah, because that's the best way to do research, mate, I think. How are you called crystal ball and you have no knowledge or insight? How did that happen? The question no one ever asks is... Why is it that so many civilians are being killed in Gaza and not that many civilians are being killed in Ukraine? Why is it? Did you hear what she just... Did you hear what she just said? When you have some sort of peace plan...

then you can come together like we did with Germany and Japan. You drop two nuclear bombs on Japan and you flatten Germany. And now you're presenting that as the way to approach Gaza where you're criticizing Netanyahu for what he's doing. I went in the comments expecting people to obviously go, this is so stupid. They're all agreeing with her. Help me. Help me!

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All right, Francis. So it's been about a week since our interview with Prime Minister Netanyahu. It's fair to say that got a little bit of a response online. Yeah. Yeah, it did. It did. God, it was so funny, the response that it got. To the point where I was like, did you actually watch or listen to the interview? Well, you know, a lot of...

online stuff is always morons who are just responding to the fact that you've interviewed someone without watching it, which is fine. What surprised me was there were actually people who purport to be serious journalists who... acted in that same way. We'll talk about breaking points in particular because they did a super, I don't want to use the word, but I can't think of another better word to describe, a super retarded video.

about that interview, which we'll talk about in a minute. But actually, you know what? I have to say, I think it's partly because you are still connected with the comedy industry, which I've forgotten all about. that you've had a lot of pushback. Most of the messages I've got have been incredibly supportive and positive. Yeah. I mean, I had one former friend message me and tell me that I'd made a forced pack. A what?

A force pact. I was like, it's a force to impact. But I've had a lot of people who seem to think that because we interviewed Netanyahu, that means we've given a PR opportunity. to Benjamin Netanyahu, whereas if Channel 4 interviewed him, that would be deemed to be acceptable. It's so interesting how people now look at the new media space and think that if you...

platform someone to quote them, that automatically means that you agree with them. Whereas if old media or legacy media... interview someone and notice the difference I'm using in words interview as opposed to platform that it seemed to be acceptable it's so interesting the way that we now look at both old and legacy

and new media and seem to hold it to very, very different standards. I will say, though, I have to agree with that perspective quite a bit for reasons that we can get into, which I think is that, historically speaking... in recent years at least, legacy media became entirely adversarial. So if they had someone on... who was a politician or in charge of a company or Jordan Peterson with Kathy Newman, right? They would do this fake confrontational nonsense where they essentially would only talk.

as if this person was some kind of combination of like a hypocrite and a pedophile. And they would treat them like that, right? And then the response to that in the new media space, I've just written an article about this on my Substack, actually, which we'll put out as a monologue here as well. Then the response from the new media was effectively, if you look at... almost every podcast that's out there, you actually very rarely see people disagreeing.

It's very, very rare. And so in the new media space, outside of one or two channels, and I would include ours in that as well, because we frequently have people on with whom we disagree and we explore those disagreements in a respectful way. Actually, most of the time...

If someone has someone on, it's only because they agree. And I wouldn't just hold a podcaster responsible for that. For example, like Joe Rogan, right? He had Trump and Vance on before the last election, but he did also want to have Kamala on.

And it was because she didn't make that happen that it didn't happen. So it's a combination of two things. You and I discussed in the last conversation we had about this that we try very hard to get people from a different perspective to ours on the show, but very often they don't want to come on. A, because they don't want to be seen to align themselves with us, but B, also because they're afraid of the disagreement and the challenge, right?

So I do understand why instinctively people take that perspective, because in the new media, it generally is the case that if you have someone on your show, it is because you agree with them. Absolutely. So again, that's fair. When people were criticizing us about the BB interview, and the thing that I didn't understand is they would say, oh, you know, you've had Tommy Robinson on, you've had Nigel Farage on. You go, yeah, but we've had Stephen Fry.

We had Deborah Francis White from the Guilty Feminist podcast. Mark Steele. Mark Steele. And not only that, we go out of our way 75%, and I mentioned it before, of our Booker's energy. goes into getting left-wing guests. We've had Breonna Wu, a trans woman who works for the Democrat Party in America. So you go, look.

Contradictory Criticisms On The Benjamin Netanyahu Interview

This is quite clearly not what we do. The modus operandi of the show has never been to get people on that we agree with so that we can nod our heads. Number one, because it's not who we are as people. But number two, it's on a purely practical level.

I don't think that business model is going to be working in the long term. It works for some people, but I don't think it's about the business model. I just don't think we find that very interesting. And that's always been the approach. You know what? I think some... distinction best for me. We get obviously lots of pushback about having people like Tommy Robinson on or others or whatever. We had a man called Roger Hallam on our show, who's the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion.

who is currently in prison, not just for committing crimes, but I think he's in prison for orchestrating the commission of crimes by other people. Terrorism, I think it is. I don't think it's terrorism. It might be. Well, we should probably look it up. We should probably look it up. Let's just take that back and say we don't know exactly, but the point is he is in prison for what he would call climate activism.

that was so destructive, he was sent to prison for many years, along with several other people, right? Have you ever had anyone come up to you and go, you platform extremists? And you go, which ones? And they go, Roger Hallam. No. No. So why is it that if you get someone on who has the wrong opinion, that's platforming extremism. But if you get someone who is literally in jail right now...

No one cares. No. And you go, that's interesting. There is something going on there. Of course, because take this, let's say, and this is a dream guest for us, Tony Blair agrees to come on the show. And I would love Tony to come on. And Tony, I know you're a massive fan of Trigg, mate. You're always welcome. But let's say we get Tony Blair on. We book him in. I bet he wouldn't even get one quarter, one quarter of the pushback.

or the condemnation that Tommy Robinson would get, even though Blair was one of the architects of the Iraq war, which resulted in the deaths of a million people. I bet we wouldn't. I would actually find it... Highly interesting. We would get some pushback. I'm sure of that. But I bet we wouldn't get even a quarter of the pushback that we had for Tommy.

It's so interesting to me. And it just shows you how much of this is just, I don't like this person. I like this person. And that's what it's about. And also there's a status thing as well. High status, low status. Tommy Robinson is considered low status. And Tony Blair is considered...

high status it's not about the death count as far as i know tony robinson has never killed anyone right tony blair with his decisions did kill lots of people but that's fine absolutely and it's not even it's what it's Going through the trigonometry journey has actually exposed me one key thing. Is that the majority of people, and I include myself in this, by the way, I was guilty of this.

Most people think emotionally. Most people don't think logically or rationally. Most people don't actually investigate what it is that they think and why that they think it. And actually, do they have any basis for their thoughts and their arguments? Are they actually based on some kind of objective truth? Do they follow a logical pattern or are they just simply emotional vomiting? And what this...

these interviews exposed with Tommy and then with Benjamin Netanyahu is most people don't. Like, they'll go to us when we talk about Benjamin Netanyahu. Oh, you didn't talk about genocide. You got his response on genocide. In that interview where he said, if we wanted to commit genocide, we would do it in an afternoon. What more do you want us to say? Well, they don't want us to say anything. What they want us is to project their worldview onto him and...

do a kathy newman style newman style interview in this one instance normally they don't like kathy newman but in this one instance they would like us to do that because they really don't like him and they hold him responsible for what's happening in gaza and whatever by the way we should just say, and I think this is an objective statement as far as I'm aware, we did the most challenging interview with Benjamin Netanyahu since the war started of anyone.

Show me an interview where he's actually challenged and asked probing questions prior to ours that's been done. I haven't seen one. Have you? No. Right. So. This is one of the funniest things that I found, including, by the way, from the kind of online far right as well, which is basically like, oh, you've got this guy on. OK, these are the same people.

that were gargling Tucker Carlson's balls when he interviewed Vladimir Putin while gargling Vladimir Putin's balls. See, you remember we had a conversation on our show about Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin. in which neither of us said he should not speak to Vladimir Putin. No. What we said is, if you're going to interview a world leader who's currently in charge of a war, you might want to ask him some probing questions, which Tucker did not do remotely.

Right? The same with when he interviewed, like all these other people, world leaders that he's interviewed, there's never any pushback at all. Right? And that is illegitimate criticism. What we did is, there used to be a word for this. that's now somewhat debased by the actions of the people who apply that word to themselves. It's called journalism. That's what we did. Of course. Of course, that's what we did. And going through it, it was just...

And the other thing that people don't seem to realize is we had half an hour. You are not going to cover every single subject in the depth that you would like because you only have half an hour. And to the people going, oh, well, why didn't you do a Rogan style interview? We would have loved to have done a Rogan style interview. But you get the time that you're allotted. Kind of a busy guy. He's a busy guy. So you get the time that you're allotted. And then as...

journalists or podcasters or whatever you want to call us, it is our job to then go, how can we maximise the time? What can we talk about in that time to expose not only... who the man is, but what he thinks and how he thinks. And that is what I'm really proud of about that interview. Because you come away from that interview knowing a lot more about Benjamin Netanyahu than you did before you listened.

And I think that is the job to expose, not to expose in the Kathy Newman sense that someone's a fascist or, you know, a hateful person or bigoted person. No, you expose who that person is in front of you. That is your job as an interviewer. And then it is the audience's job to make their own mind up. And it's really quite that simple. And anything else. where if you want us to sit there and go, you know, harangue someone consistently, and by the way, we did push back, and we pushed back.

More than I've ever seen on anybody else. But if you think that that is journalism to harangue someone, then I'm very sorry. That is not journalism. That is virtue signaling to the crowd. But like you said, most people don't want. They want their worldview to be pushed by all means necessary. And you talked about people having an emotional reaction to things instead of thinking logically. I just think I have not seen...

I was going to say, I'm just going to check in my mind before I say this out loud. I think Israel in recent years is the issue on which that's true to the greatest extent. I have not seen otherwise sensible people be so deranged about any other issue. I was thinking maybe BLM, but no, Israel more than BLM. Israel more than BLM. Yeah. Because the sorts of things that otherwise very sensible people...

Like, in the time since our interview with Netanyahu has come out, the IDF accidentally struck a hospital. Twice, yeah. Twice. It sounds funny, accidentally struck a hospital twice, but we don't know exactly what's happened. There might be a targeting issue. And I see people online, I mean, Pierce is a good example, like quote tweeting Benjamin Netanyahu saying this was a terrible mishap or something like that, going, no, this was deliberate. How do you know? How the fuck do you know?

I mean, I remember growing up watching Americans hitting a hospital. I remember when there was a war in Yugoslavia, Serbia, wherever it was. They hit a hospital then. During the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American armed forces were hitting hospitals left, right, and center. I mean, to the point where...

You know, every hack comedian had a joke about, you know, a wedding in Pakistan. Do you remember? Yes. Drone strike, wedding pact. It was like a thing that you'd hear every gig for a period of time. And because in war...

these things do tend to happen and it's tragic that they do. And sometimes mistakes happen or sometimes we don't know. I mean, I have heard reports that at this hospital, there were militants who were hiding and using it as a staging base, which is why. Anyway, we don't know what happened, but it's like.

The people who are pro-Israel immediately go, no, this is what happened. And the people who are anti-Israel go, no, this is what happened. And we don't know. We don't know. And because everyone is in a rush to give their take on it. logic and factual information just goes completely out of the window. Of course, because what we want in life and what we push back on so much in the show, and I think it's one of the central themes of the show.

is black and white thinking when the reality is unfortunately we don't like autistic people unfortunately that's about 80 percent of our fan base down the drain mate no but unfortunately in life It's not black and white. It's nuanced. It's nuanced. And things happen and mistakes are made and tragic events occur.

It's complicated. And people don't want that. They don't want to accept that. Because what that means, if life is nuanced, it means that you have to think deeply about the issues. It means that you actually have to investigate them for yourselves, weigh up one argument. Another argument, investigate the merits of argument A, investigate the merits of argument B, see where they have strengths, see what their weaknesses are.

and then come to your own opinion and conclusion. And the danger with that is, is number one, you have to think for yourself, which is always dangerous. If you look at history, people who think they're for themselves never tends to end well. And number two... What it also does is it alienates you from people in argument A and people in argument B.

A large part of the reason that people go into these two camps is we are fundamentally tribal by nature. And the moment you start to think to yourself, the reason that it's dangerous is because you're going... I reject the tribes. I'm going to be an individual. And from an evolutionary biological point of view, that is a very dangerous place to put yourself. Well, it's death. If you are ostracized from your village, that's death.

And it's not just death. You know, dying fighting for your tribe in a war is a lot more satisfying than being cast out into the desert and starving to death. So that ostracism that people fear evolutionarily is terrifying to people. I've often thought that the overwhelming majority of people have some sort of fear of public speaking.

I actually had a fear of public speaking at one point. I think we are hardwired to be fearful of that situation because if you think about it, in the ancestral environment, you're living in your village, 150 people or so.

The Effect Of Social Media On How People View War

If you find yourself in a position where you are in front of people and they're staring at you silently, that would not have been a good circumstance 99% of the time. So that is a barrier that many, many people have to overcome. And people think, oh, it's because you got sent up to the blackboard at school. No. No, no, it's hardwired into you. So that fear of ostracism is part of it. But I think with the war in Gaza, we're also facing it's something else entirely.

which is the visual medium, the visual channel in human brains is so powerful. It's so much more powerful than anything else. It is overwhelmingly powerful. And when you see images of true horror, which you will see in every conflict zone, it completely overwhelms your logical reasoning and faculties by necessity.

It's just how it is. And I think with one of the reasons that you see this with Gaza is people are just seeing horrific shit day in, day out. And it shuts down their ability to think critically. I'll give you one example, which I just think sums it up. There's a meme. that i keep seeing popping up and this is in my feed so you know it's it's doing well elsewhere right which is uh x number of children have been killed in ukraine and you know a hundred times more however many more

children killed in Gaza. That's the difference between war and genocide, right? Okay. Now, if you know anything about these two conflicts, you go, that is the most stupid thing that anyone's ever said. Because what they're trying to say is, look, Israel is committing genocide. Russia, even though it's bad and wrong to invade, is not, right? Why is it? But the question no one ever asked is, why is it that so many civilians are being killed in Gaza?

And not that many civilians are being killed in Ukraine. Why is it? Well, I know because I have family in Ukraine. And you know what they do when the air raid sirens go off? They go down into the tube in Kiev. They go down into the tunnels, which the government has made available for them and encouraged them to use. In other words, Ukraine has done everything possible to make use of all the facilities it has.

to allow the civilians to be safe from Russian attacks. But in Gaza, they have a tunnel network that is bigger than the London tube, and not one civilian has been allowed in. The point being... The reason that civilians are dying in Gaza is that their government, Hamas, wants them to be killed and is doing everything possible to prevent them from surviving. It's not using the facilities it has.

to save them, it's deliberately putting them in harm's way. That's why it's happening. But if all you see are these horrific images of war, and you don't think beyond that, a meme that is as stupid as that. sounds convincing. The world is changing fast and it's not enough to just know what the news is. You have to know how it's being reported because the truth often depends on where you're standing.

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Look, I completely agree. And I also think as well, in a world which is as sanitized as ours, which is as safe as ours, where we talk about things like safe spaces, microaggressions, ad nauseum. I think people are desperate to feel something. And one of the easiest ways to feel something is to go online and to see something horrific. And there's a part of, just as you can get addicted to...

things like hardcore pornography or any other type of images. So you can get addicted to a kind of outrage loop where you see a horrendous image or video from war, which are not difficult to find. And so you get that mainlined into your brain and then you feel outrage. Of course you feel outrage. It's natural. If you see the corpse of a child being uncovered from rubble.

What human being wouldn't be outraged about that? What human being wouldn't feel angry? What human being wouldn't feel despair? But you're not really going to get those emotions, those visceral feelings from... your everyday life. So I think people as well, they get hooked on that. And then they feel that they are on this part of this moral crusade. So then they can talk about what's happening and then they can vent and then they can get angry.

And it gives, I suppose it gives them a sense of meaning and purpose. You know, if you just go to your nine to five and life is kind of boring and blah, blah, blah, you don't feel alive. Yeah. What if you're... You're on a mission together with other people on some kind of moral crusade. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, it's interesting.

After our interview came out, we actually went away for a few days for holiday. And we had a chance to meet a few people there. One of them is a former lecturer at one of America's most prestigious universities. And one of the things he said that... shocked me, but also didn't shock me. He talked about the fact that in his department, which was in the humanities, and this was a relevant test for them to give their students, when they got a new intake of students, they would give them a test.

just an induction test, just to find out where they were at. And what they would do is they would ask them to place countries in Europe on a map. They would give them labels and they would give them a blank map and labels to put on. And he said that a third of students...

People are going to think a third of students couldn't put the right countries, didn't know where Belgium was. No, a third of students put the labels on the Mediterranean Sea. They could not tell the difference between the sea and the land, right? That's a third of students at one of America's most prestigious universities. The world's one of the world's most prestigious. Yes. And the other thing he said is they don't have the concept...

of when things happened in time very often. In other words, to them, ancient Greece and the American War of Independence might have happened 100 years apart. Literally, this is what he said, right? So if you have people whose thinking is disjointed in time and also in space...

It means that there are certain things that they're simply not able to understand. We will see this when we analyze the breaking points video because it just stands out that people that accomplished and with such a big audience don't understand basic things. But if you're dislocated in time and space, it means that you have no ability to analyze and assess the thing you're currently seeing in its true context. Because history is context. That's...

That's the point. You can't analyze whether what human beings are doing today is right or wrong or good or bad without understanding what human beings have always done. Thomas Sowell is one of the things he always talks about. Their best way. to predict human behavior in the future is to notice human behavior in the past, right? So if you're dislocated in this way, then you can't even ask the question of, yes, these things are happening. Why are they happening?

If civilians are dying in Gaza, why is that? But if you just see the images and you go, oh, that's terrible, then all of that context goes away entirely. Of course. And it's also as well... But it also comes down to something else, Constantine. And it's something that I have a constant battle with. And I think everybody has a constant battle with, which is ego, which is you've got to have the humility.

to realize there are things that you do not understand in this world. I do not comment on whether Israel should stop the war or have they gone too far, because the answer is, I don't know. Thank God I've never been in a battlefield. Thank God I've never had to join an army. I am not a military person. I'm not a military expert. I'm not a geopolitical expert. I do not know enough.

Discussing Comments On The Breaking Points Reaction Video

My job is to investigate these things like you do and to talk to people far more learned than ourselves about particular subjects. As a result of that, I think I've got more information than your average layman, but I don't presume... to understand what we should do when it comes to this war and what the ramifications are going to be afterwards. Because UK, OK, stop the war, right? And then what? And then what?

What are we going to do? What's going to happen with Hamas? What's going to happen with Fatah? What's going to happen with... I don't know. I genuinely don't know. Well, if you think about it, nobody does. That's why this conflict's been going on for as long as it has. If someone had a solution to the Middle East, we would have had it by now. This is the point. It's very, very difficult. This is why...

I think we inevitably find ourselves at the point where we need to discuss the breaking points video. This is why, as people will see, they position our interview, which they haven't watched. Yeah. Because that's the best way to do research, mate, I think. I always, you know what? When I'm researching for a guest, what I like to do is go, is just not do any interview, is not do any for research. It's kind of meta.

I am laughing, but it is sad. Anyway, they position our interview, which they haven't watched. Yes. As us trying to make Netanyahu look reasonable, when in the last question of the interview, I say to him, how are you actually going to achieve peace? Now, that seems to me like a pretty fucking important question to ask a person who's involved in a conflict. What is your peace process that you have in your head, given the realities on the ground?

And they present that as us making him look moderate. Anyway, let's watch the video and we'll talk about it because this is incredible. Right. Fresh off his blockbuster appearance with the NELC boys, Benjamin Netanyahu has now joined the gentleman of Trigonometry for an appearance. Admittedly, I haven't had a chance. This came out last night. I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing. Producer Griffin.

It doesn't burn. Do you know what? Maybe people have got a point about new media. I take it back. Right, they do. By the way, I should say, the moment I saw this video... Now, you know me, you will confirm this. I never, ever get annoyed about people criticizing us. Ever. Right? Because I'm like...

You want to put your opinion out in public or you want to be a public figure or you want to do things in public, people are going to have an opinion. I always give this example. Do you know who Steph Curry is? Yes. So Steph Curry, for people who don't know. is an amazing basketball player in the NBA to the point where he's not just amazing. He's like one of those once in a generation people who actually changed the game. Yeah. And by all accounts, he's a great guy.

a great family man, a brilliant player, a brilliant teammate. And I fucking hate him. And I do because he changed the game in a way that I don't like. I grew up in the Michael Jordan era where people basically hardly ever shot three points.

Steph Curry can shoot them from a halfway line and it's changed the game entirely. And because of that, I think it's kind of boring. I don't like it as much. I hate this guy who's, by all accounts, a great guy. My point being, the moment you are in the public eye... People are going to have their opinions about you. They're going to like to hate you. I totally understand and I have no problem with it. When I watch this video, I literally...

I fucking exploded. I was like, how can you be so stupid? Their channel has the same number of subscribers as ours. Like, they've got a big YouTube channel. And look at them. Look at the way they've presented it. They purport to be journalists, right? And this is how they start this video. Admittedly, I haven't watched it, but my producer has picked out a clip that totally misrepresents the interview. Let's talk about it. I know. I know. And this...

The thing that I've found, it's almost a satirical parody of new media. There's a comedian who I actually want to have on the show called Marc Maron, who is highly critical of new media. And to be fair, I think he makes a number of good points and he's very funny about it. it but this is like something like this is like a sketch mark would write if the snl did a sketch this is the opening line now i haven't seen it this thing

I haven't seen this interview, but listen to me make a half an hour video about it where I comment about it in depth. Do you know, there's a very famous Soviet joke about this where there was a poet called Brodsky who was, he was being...

prosecuted in russia in the soviet russia uh for basically having the wrong opinion uh and at his trial one of the people said i haven't listened to his poetry but i just like to say this is like how are you Anyway, let's see what opinion she has having not watched the interview.

Producer Griffin pulled a couple of clips that he thought were interesting. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this first one. This is Konstantin saying basically, listen, I don't think there's any peace possible with these people in Gaza because they are, quote unquote, Jew haters. Let's take a listen. I didn't say no peace is possible. I'm saying, how are you going to get to peace? As I said before, that's what a journalist is supposed to ask the Prime Minister of Israel.

How are you planning to get peace when this is a reality on the ground? By the way, forgive me for calling the people who support Hamas overwhelmingly Jew haters. I mean, is that a contested claim? I don't... I don't understand what she's saying. Is she saying they're not Jew haters? Yeah. I think if you want the river to the sea, Palestine to be free, which is the obliteration of the Israeli state...

You are a Jew. Has she not seen clips of the education system in Gaza and videos on TV where they're literally teaching their children that Jews are like rats? Yeah. And let's take the word teaching and put indoctrinated in it. Has she not seen that? Has she not seen the polling from Gaza? Does she not know what Hamas actually stands for? But this is the thing. This is people who comment about the Middle East who know...

Nothing about the Middle East. It's why, you know, and Douglas Murray got in trouble for this when he said the immortal words, you've never been. But as somebody who has Lebanese heritage and talks to the Lebanese family. People don't understand that the way people think in that part of the world and the attitudes they have are very, very, very different.

from the attitudes people hold in the West. But you can think that what Israel is doing is evil and wrong and terrible in every way and blah, blah, blah. But you can't deny that people in Gaza overwhelmingly hate Israel and Jews. Yes. That's not a contestable claim. That's just a statement of fact. Absolutely. Absolutely. But again, it goes back...

And we've got this interview coming out with Tom Holland, which is absolutely brilliant, where Tom talks about the fact that even if you're an atheist, even if you think to yourself that you are not Christian in any way, you have been raised... into a society with Christian morals and values and a Christian outlook. That is the waters that you swim in. And so naturally, in our culture and our society, we think...

that everybody else is raised with Christian values and morals. And that is quite simply not the case. Right. And people don't seem to understand that. They seem to think, and this is the reason why we thought we could bring democracy. to the Middle East, why we could go out and that people would all of a sudden want democracy and Western values. But that is a form of arrogance because we believe everyone thinks like us, but they don't.

because they've been raised with a different value, a different culture, and a different religion. They hate you, they hate Israel, and they hate Jews. How are you going to have a peaceful coexistence with those people, particularly... Successful programs of de-radicalization in some of the Gulf states, which are actually proving to break the...

you know, this prototype of Arab societies that cannot seize the future. I'm not saying they're model democracies, mind you. They're not. But they certainly want to seize modernity and not go back to the... Savage in early medievalism. Please. Please tell me how Constantine is making Netanyahu sound more moderate than him. And like, yeah, just the idea that, okay, you know, these people hate you. Yeah, gee, I wonder why. Maybe it's because they've been like...

occupied and being starved and bombed to pieces for, you know, and not even just post-October 7th. But also, Sagar, you can speak to this. Do you think she's read the Quran? No. Do you think she understands the history of how Christians and Jews have always been treated in the Muslim world? No. Christians and Jews are, by definition, second-class citizens. Doesn't mean they were...

they were killed necessarily or whatever. But people of the book, Christians and Jews in Muslim society throughout history, were by definition second-class citizens. By definition, look down upon. By definition, having to pay a different tax, use a different, you know, like ride a donkey instead of a horse, all of this other stuff. She thinks that... Many Muslims hate Jews because of Gaza. It's somebody, and again, we go back to this, who's got no understanding of the Middle East.

My family, my grandfather's family, are from Lebanon. They are, if you look at South America, in particular Colombia and Venezuela, it has... hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, Syrian and Middle Eastern Christians. Why is that? Did they just go there because they fancied a nice little beach holiday? You know, they liked, you know, dancing along with the maracas. I know that's Mexican, but you get my point.

They liked a little bit of Samba and a carnival. No, they fled for their lives because they knew what would happen. Was Israel attacking them? Might well have been, mate, yeah. But that's the sort of thing that she probably thinks. Yeah. She probably thinks the entire Middle East, which was completely Christian, completely Christian, and now isn't, is because of Israel. Yeah, and it's a complete historical illiteracy.

It's a not understanding of the Middle East and its history, which is complicated and tragic and bloodshot. The people who are the precursors to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, right? They joined forces with Hitler before Israel even existed. Yeah.

Like, what is she talking about? But you see, this goes back to what I was talking about, which has been with argument A and argument B. And if you want to be with argument A, let's just call it that's the side that breaking points are on, the anti-war, the stop the war, the whatever else, then what you have to do is you have to be blind to the history.

and to what has happened. She's making me fucking appreciate Dave Smith. At least she's read something. Yeah. Like, how is she... It's so frustrating, because, look... Like I said, people are allowed to criticize, they're allowed to have their own opinion. But if you're going to comment on something like this... And you don't know anything. How are you called crystal ball and you have no knowledge or insight? How did that happen? And by the way, if it sounds like we're slagging them off, right?

The moment we saw this video released, we had our team reach out to them and say, I would be very happy to come on and discuss this. They read our email and guess what? No response. Yeah. Right. Anyway, this is making me angry. Keep watching.

It's October 7th. But also, Sagar, you can speak to this. How many times throughout history have we seen bitter enemies who hate each other? And guess what? When you're able to come up with some sort of a peace deal and have a coexistence, you know, that fades over time. We can see it with our own country.

We were bitter enemies, obviously, and went to war with Germany and Japan, and now these are some of our closest allies. Well, we can see it inside of our own country. Did you hear what she just said? Did you hear what she just said? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you have some sort of peace plan, then you can come together like we did with Germany and Japan. You dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.

And you flattened Germany. And arguably, the bombing was worse. It was way worse. And now you're presenting that as the way to approach... Gaza, where you're criticizing Netanyahu for what he's doing. What? I don't think anyone's ever seen me. This is exasperated. I am not regularly confronted with this level of retardation. What is she talking about? But look, again, it goes back to historical illiteracy. Because if you knew about the Second World War, if you knew...

That's what I asked Netanyahu about. That's why I was saying to him, what is your approach to peace, given that you've got a radicalized population like you had in Nazi Germany and like you had in Japan? It's almost like they didn't watch the video, mate. In Germany, after the war, if you wanted to get a food parcel as a German, you had to go and watch a movie about the Holocaust to get it. That was the level of deradicalization that had to happen.

Help me, Francis. How is this possible? How are these people talking on YouTube? How? And I went in the, I confess, I don't usually read the comments. I went in the comments expecting people to obviously go, this is so stupid. They'll all agree with her. Help me! Help me! Organ meats are some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet.

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. Look, this is, and again... To me, this is the issue with new media and this is the issue with the Internet in that you can have these views and opinions. But if you don't have people to challenge, if you don't have people for the opposite side, then what happens?

is you get these views and opinions and they're nonsensical, but because they're not robustly challenged, people don't point out the flaws with your argument. That seemed to happen to Ann Coulter in this interview, if you remember. But Saga knows history, right? And he just sits there and nods along. What's going on?

our own country north and south took a long time to shake out that's exactly yeah i mean that is the israeli line which drives me more insane than any other is we can't be expected to live next to these people no actually you can if india has to live next to

Pakistan, you can do it, too. All right. Yeah. They both have nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction. If Iran has to live next to Saudi Arabia, then so can you. I can go on forever. Northern Ireland and Ireland. You know, I mean, how many of these have we now? They're like, they actually, Israeli exception, is that they want to be the only nation in the history of the world that actually is not required to live next to the people.

what again that speaks to so you're talking about Ireland and Northern Ireland you know that Ireland was a civil war but that is very different and by the way Irish family Irish heritage all the rest of it I know a little bit about the history of Ireland. That is very, very different. I find it actually really frustrating when people compare Northern Ireland.

to what is happening. Now, of course there was hatred. Of course people were dying. Of course there were murders. There were bombs. There were terrorism. It was tragic, awful. The history of Ireland is particularly blood-soaked and brutal. But he... does not compare to the Middle East. It's a completely different thing. You have one religion in Ireland split into two factions, Protestantism, Catholicism. In the Middle East, you have Islam and Judaism.

You don't only have Islam, you have Islamism. You cannot compare, in my view, Christian extremism, which is what you have, and Islamism. Islamism as the... which is what Hamas is, is a type of religious ideology that celebrates the death of their own children in order to achieve a political outcome.

You get extremists in Northern Ireland. You get people like Bobby Sands who will go and hang a strike and will die and will not eat for his political cause. I doubt Bobby Sands would have wanted his own children to die of starvation and to see them suffer. Hamas and Islamists see that as a noble outcome and something to be celebrated. That is highly different. And also, I wasn't advocating in my question to Netanyahu.

that they shouldn't live next to people in Gaza, nor was that what Netanyahu was saying. He was saying we need a program of deradicalization so these people don't want to kill us all the time, then we can live in peace. That's his mission. as he believes it to be. So no one is saying, at least they're not saying, Netanyahu's not saying and we're not saying, that they can't, that wasn't what was said in that interview. No. I don't know what they're talking about. No.

No. And again, it goes back to what are you doing is taking clips from an interview without context. You haven't done the work. You don't have the background understanding. If you take something and go, look. This is a clip from the interview. Just for the audience, you have to know that this was discussed, this was discussed, this was... They did the same thing with me, where they took... Well, we'll get to it. Yeah, we'll get to it. And so you just go, actually...

You don't know what you're talking about. They don't. It's like... And by the way, we should say they're intelligent people. Yeah. I assume. Yeah. No, they are. They are, right?

But I guess ignorance combined with intelligence is actually the worst outcome. Absolutely, because if you're smart... and you're ignorant, then what you can do is you can logically argue your way into any position, which is what we've seen with a lot of the progressive hyper-liberal movements and what we've seen with the woke right. where you're smart so you can go, oh, you know, diversity of our strength is bad. Therefore, hey, let's all support white people.

Nothing wrong with supporting white people, but we don't want identity politics for any group, really. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't mean supporting white people. I mean, let's now get revenge, which is what it is. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Okay.

Better question is how, you know, Palestinians after this genocide of them could be expected to live next to the Israelis. But that's something we should expect of them, too. We're like, listen, you got a shit deal, but you have to live here. That's exactly right. I mean, that's.

the nature of, you know, of humanity. That's the nature of being able to have some sort of an agreement. And yes, over time, not to say that there won't be continued to be tensions as there are, you know, in Ireland and Northern Ireland, like there continue to be.

tensions. But the idea that, oh, no, you couldn't possibly live next to these is just preposterous and historically illiterate. There was another interesting section where the other host, Francis, is pressing Netanyahu a bit on some of the comments of, you know, Smotrichs and the Ben Gavirs. Let's go ahead and take a listen to how that went down. There are critics of yours, Prime Minister, who will say, well, part of the reason that...

Israel is losing the propaganda war is when you have ministers like Shmotrik making incendiary or inflammatory comments, and there doesn't seem to be any particular pushback from your government to this. They go, well... What does the prime minister really believe? Well, what I believe I say, in a parliamentary system, people are free to say. Sometimes they say things they don't quite mean. It happens all the time. You have a very active fringe.

Prime Minister, forgive me, but these aren't parliamentarians. These are people who are part of your government. And they remain part of your government after they say these things that to many people, even your friends, sound a little bit like ethnic cleansing is being discussed. Well, we're not discussing ethnic cleansing and...

to the extent that we have these conversations around the cabinet, the security cabinet, that is actually not being discussed by these people. But Prime Minister, may I just interrupt? When you have your finance minister making a speech and talking about occupying Gaza and the... doesn't seem to be any pushback within the government, people quite rightly, in my opinion, would say, well, surely aren't you condoning that type of rhetoric?

No. And that is exacerbating Israel's PR problem. I disagree completely. When somebody says that, and I'm asked, is that your policy? And I say, no. It's not my policy. I don't intend to build settlements or communities in Gaza. They're not Israeli ones. I want a non-Israeli civilian governance after that is committed to living in peace with us.

It is so unbelievably dishonest at this point to still pretend like that's not your policy and like you condemn it and you have nothing to do with it. But you also got to give me credit because I called that this would be exactly how he would answer. It's a democracy. Yes, we have a fringe.

inflammatory rhetoric, blah, blah, blah. I was like, how is he going to square that? Because it's true. But I had not, I didn't put myself in the mind of BB to be like, yes, we have free speech. We have a vibrant society where we allow such things. But I mean.

To Francis' credit, he was like, no. It would be like somebody else. You want me to pause it because they gave you credit? Yeah, exactly. You know what, mate? I take it back. He's all right. Crystal fair enough, mate. Saga, if you're watching this, we'll go for a beer. if non-alcoholic probably.

It would be like somebody else using Ilhan Omar's statements. I mean, yeah, you could say that. Like, look, we have 435 members of Congress. One of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ilhan, they say some crazy shit sometimes, whatever. But that is not the same whenever those people are actually in.

power, members of the government. And when the government policy reflects their desire. And then government policy reflects their desire to the point where they're handing out weapons in the West Bank and or U.S. dollars.

The Problems With Journalism

which they then use to prop up their expansionist regime. That's very different than, oh, we have free speech. This is the thing about Bibi. He's the master. It's not like he has always in his perfect... philadelphia born english you know he understands which parts are distasteful you know to the u.s public and so in english he does not endorse any of this stuff but it again google in the age of google translate and ai if i will

You can easily dub the stuff he says in Hebrew and it's the same stuff. That's right. That's the stuff that drives me crazy too. Yeah. And that's part of what I think the framing of the question. I have all kinds of issues with the framing of the question. First of all, the idea that it.

Israel just has a PR problem is just disgusting, in my opinion, genocide. We're going to get to that with Meghan. She said that, too. She's like, the Palestinians are masters of propaganda. And that, you know, oh, the problem is just this incendiary rhetoric. And why don't you do more to condemn this incendiary rhetoric?

Well, because he supports it, because he is the one implementing and pushing forward the policy that they want to see. I mean, we're talking right now as Gaza City is. Was there more you want? No, no, no. Is that it? You're happy to leave it there? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Apart from when she says that I'm one level above the Nelk boys. That we're one level above the Nelk boys. Well, the Nelk boys have a bigger audience, so what are you going to do?

But I found that very interesting because criticisms of me and for us is the framing of the question. The framing of the question refers to a comment that Benjamin Netanyahu said and was talking about literally before that. That's why we framed the question. Yeah, but she hasn't seen the interview, so how could she know that? So you're just going, you're making criticisms about the way that we're presenting the interview and the questions that we are putting forward for an interview.

that you haven't watched. So how can you possibly criticise? But again, what it goes back to is the lack of journalistic rigour, number one. But also, and this is a problem with journalism. And it reminds me of comedians when they only play to the comedians at the back of the room. And they didn't care about the audience. And you're going, you want us to behave in a way.

so that I look for your approval. I look for the approval of the people who despise and hate Israel or Benjamin Netanyahu or condemn his actions, which, fair enough. You are more than welcome to that. But here's the thing. I am not and we are not going to conduct an interview seeking your approval. I don't care about your approval. It doesn't interest me. actually one way or another. What we care about here is going after the truth and exposing the person sitting in front of us. And again.

Not exposing him to be a far right big or whatever else, to expose the way he thinks, how he thinks, and why he thinks the way that he does. And treating the audience like adults. for them to make their own mind up. You know, and it speaks to a comment that a very good friend of mine who will remain nameless because I think he'd probably prefer to still have a career. He messaged me. He called me afterwards when the interview came out and he said, you know something, I've understood something.

that I hadn't quite thought of before, which is the entire Western world, particularly people like this, we're kind of like doing the... We're kind of like doing queers for Palestine at scale. In other words, we are people who are sitting in comfort and safety and having all of these very clever, sophisticated... opinions about a country that actually is fighting for its survival. That's what's happening. And if something like October 7th had happened...

on Crystal's doorstep. I don't imagine she'd be taking the position that she's taking. No. And this is, when we talk to Netanyahu, this is one of the things that I go, and people can like or dislike it, but it's a fact. I think he sees himself as the leader of his people at a time when he has a choice between allowing their destruction or ensuring their survival. That's what's happened. And you can...

Agree with that. You can disagree with that. But that is where he's coming at it from. And you've got to understand his history. I mean, I think he was in the Special Forces. His brother died in an anti-terrorist hostage rescue mission. He himself served. So this isn't a guy who did PPE at Oxford and then went into politics. This is a guy who's been fighting for Israel his entire life.

You know, I tried to get it out of him in that interview, but you could see it wasn't going anywhere, which is like, how did you feel when October... There was no feeling there at all. You got the decision. You know, which is what happened. You know, it's so interesting.

I spoke to a number of people who are not remotely political who watched that interview. And they all said the same thing. Do you know what they said? It's weird. It's weird. And this will be unpleasant to a lot of people to hear who don't agree with what Israel is doing. They all said the same thing.

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If our country, this country, was in danger in the way that Israel was, do you want Keir Starmer in charge? Or do you want Benjamin Netanyahu? I know which one I'm picking. You know what I mean? And so I just think a lot of this is people, as I've said many, many times before, in air-conditioned studios having opinions about things that they demonstrably don't understand. From this...

excessive empathy and an inability to contextualize things in history. And also to actually, you know, empathy is partly about putting yourselves in the shoes of other people. Put yourselves in the shoes of people who have to live next door to the people who committed October the 7th. How might you be thinking? What might you be demanding on the airwaves on your big YouTube channel? What might you be asking for? We saw it with 9-11.

I don't remember a measured response. No. I don't remember people being all that concerned about innocent Iraqis, and especially in America. In Britain, we really pushed back against them as much as we could. And Tony Blair was bullied into it, I believe, and went along with it.

In America, there was no such righteousness. They attacked us. We're going to go and destroy the people who did. Now, I don't think they handled it very well, but I also am not a hypocrite enough to sit here and be like... well, Israel can't go and destroy the government and organisation that did this. And if those people are putting their own civilians in harm's way to win the PR war, that's not Israel's fault. What this is, to me, and...

This is Rob Henderson's idea. And we've had him on the show many times. And it's a luxury belief. It's a luxury belief. If you had, if America had Hezbollah firing rockets. From Mexico. There would be no Mexico. Yeah. It would be a glass sheet. Yeah. There would be no Mexico. Yeah. And what's very interesting, and people may not know this, is so Hezbollah, they're a terrorist, but they're also a drug running organization.

In Venezuela, Venezuela has very close links with Iran. It has very close links with Russia, with China, but particularly with Iran. There is a little island off the coast of Venezuela, which is part of Venezuelan territory, called the Island of Margarita. At the moment, there is a Hezbollah training camp in Margarita. That is just open knowledge. Everybody knows that in Venezuela. Trump is going to come down very hard on Venezuela.

in the next few months and years. And they're talking about it openly and honestly. Now, why is that? Is it because they hate Venezuelans or the Venezuelan people? Or is it because they know that there is a direct security risk having a Hezbollah training camp about three and a half...

our flight away from florida and miami it's very simple and this idea that and this is why and i understand with america because if you live in a nation as powerful and as geographically isolated as the united states

It gives you a certain, well, why should I care? Why should we get involved? You know, this is awful. And I get that and I understand that. It's one of the things that makes America so great is they don't have to worry about being invaded. They don't have to worry about their land being taken.

Why Is This Continuing?

taken over by enemies and their people being destroyed. They don't have to worry about that. Most other countries in the world have to worry about it. Absolutely. But if you live in a country where you have another nation as powerful as Iran... using openly genocidal language, wiping off the face of the earth, etc., etc., etc., funding terrorist organizations that fire rockets into your country that also fund...

Hamas, and who then commit the atrocities that was October the 7th, Iran directly funds Hamas. you can make a very good, strong argument that essentially Iran indirectly or directly, actually directly funded October 7th. By all accounts, by the way, just while we're on that, just to be clear, by all accounts, what we know, I think so far, is they did not know that it was specifically going to happen, but they were aware of a general plan.

Absolutely. And if you give money to an organisation that openly advocates for wiping Israel off the map, I doubt you'd wake up the next day, see October the 7th, and be like, oh, that was a bit of an overreaction. It's just so obvious. Like the suffering in Gaza. So people, what people tend to do is they go, look at the suffering in Gaza, therefore, and then they make a bunch of completely unconnected statements. The suffering in Gaza is awful. It's awful.

It's terrible. I never used to understand why people would say this before I became a parent. When you become a parent, you experience a kind of very, I was going to say very powerful, it's not very powerful. overwhelming, debilitating vulnerability. And this is why when you see politicians go to the scene of a mass shooting, as we've tragically just had in America as we're recording this or whatever, and they always say, I'm a parent.

to the parents and what they're trying to communicate is i understand your pain because i can imagine because it's every parent's worst nightmare of course i i can't understand but i can Just about imagine what it's like to have your family killed. And I know people in Ukraine who've had that happen. It's awful. But the question you have to ask is, why is this continuing? Why is it still going on?

This could have ended. This could have ended on October the 8th, for God's sake. All Hamas had to do was return the hostages that they stole, the people they stole from Israel, many of whom have died. and the remaining ones of whom are being held in horrific conditions and being forced to dig their own graves, for God's sake, and surrender the terrorists who took them. That's all they had to do. And they haven't. And they still don't. They could end this war tomorrow.

and they don't. Why is that? That's the question you have to ask. Why do the people who have the ability to end this war today refuse to do so, even though it means tens of thousands of their fellow citizens being killed?

One Of Liberalism's Big Flaws

Is it possible that they care more about their political goals than they do care about those civilians? Absolutely. And this is what people refuse to talk about when they talk about this. It's why... I find myself getting so frustrated. And they also compare because there are extremists on the Israeli side. Let's just be honest about it. Of course. There's extremists on the Israeli side.

You know, I've been reading about the settlers. That is something I am not very comfortable with at all. And I don't think you are. And there's a lot of people who are pro-Israel who think that actually the behavior by the settlers. It's not good. It's not good. You look at some of the language used by Smotrich and Ben Gavir. I condemn that language. I condemn that language. Absolutely. No uncertain terms, which is why we made the decision to challenge.

challenged Benjamin Netanyahu about it, and we felt that was important. But you can't tell me the extremism is the same on both sides. You cannot tell me that the extremism of the settlers... is equal to the extremism of October 7th. It's not. You can't tell me that. It's not. It's not. It's not. I mean, these people fundamentally don't understand Islamism. They just don't. And they don't care to.

They much prefer to live in a world where all cultures... It's the same moral relativism that we saw from the progressives this entire time. All cultures are the same, all cultures are equal. No, they're fucking not. No. They're just not. And if you want to understand how they're not, look at Europe.

What happens as the demographics of Europe change the world? Guess what? Sexual assault goes up. I wonder why that is. Is it possible that importing lots of people from cultures that think women are basically cattle, is it possible that that might increase?

bad treatment of women in our country and people are very uncomfortable about this i remember i was on i can see you've got some kind of joke no no because it's a true story it's funny because i was saying you know we were talking i went on a date with this girl and she was like

You know, I think it's disgusting how people say old cultures, you know, some cultures are better than others. I'm like, well, where would you rather live? Here, when we're going for a nice Japanese meal in shortage, or... under Taliban rule. In Afghanistan. In Afghanistan. And that was the end of the day. The day never recovered. It never recovered. But... But that's how people think. They refuse to see this. That's why we've had...

mass waves of illegal immigration from cultures that we don't want here. Because that's how people think. See, this is the problem, right? This is the central myth that I think... liberalism has created, and I'm a big fan of liberalism, but I think this is one of its big flaws. That whole thing about all men are created equal in the US Constitution, what I think it was meant to mean... was that all people should be given equal opportunity absolutely right but people aren't equal

And your coach, I mean, it's one of the reasons you want your child to get a good education and you want them to be raised and you want to raise them well, et cetera, because you recognize that a failure to educate them properly and a failure to. bring them up properly, will make them into a worse person, right? Now, what if you have a whole culture that's teaching children to be a worse person or a better person? That's what we mean when we say not all cultures are equal.

Antisemitism Throughout The Middle East

And that's just an observable fact. Yeah. It's just a reality that you can see before you. And this is what people don't want to engage with. And the reason they don't want to engage with it is because it's desperately uncomfortable. It's the central myth, like I said. Yeah, it's desperately uncomfortable. It's not particularly pleasant. Where you have to go, these values are incompatible with our civilization. And they are. They just are.

If you import a culture, people from a culture who believe that homosexuality is a sin and these people should be executed, I don't know how you can have that and a gay pride parade. I don't know how you have those two things together. Well, you don't. And you can't. And people don't want to admit that. I mean, the gay prior parades are not a massive concern for me. But...

Okay, but you know what I mean. I know exactly what you mean, which is, like, this is the irony, right? It's like the people that we're talking about would want Crystal Ball never to show her face in public and never to speak. That's what they want. And yet she's acting like we're the same. We're just not. We just don't view the world in the same way. We don't. And this comes back to, again...

My grandfather was originally a Lebanese heritage. I don't think people in the West understand how deep anti-Semitism runs through the Middle East. And by the way, my grandfather was a Lebanese Christian. a Lebanese Christian, but he was anti-Semitic and hated Israel. Now, if you think that comes from a Lebanese Christian, can you imagine what it comes from? The depths of hatred in other countries?

with people who are Islamists, they will stop at nothing in order to see Israel wiped off the map. And you know what's funny about this? I mean, this is the great irony of this whole thing. Muslims understand this. Muslims know all this. That's why the UAE and Saudi Arabia and many, many former Soviet Muslim countries are doing everything within their power to crack down on Islamism.

I mean, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are working incredibly hard because they don't have this political correctness bullshit. So they're like, of course, these are the extremists. These are crazy people, right? They're crazy religious ideologues who want to take a literal interpretation of the Quran and destroy our entire society and turn this into a caliphate because that's what they see as the Quran saying, right?

And they know this, so they fight it. They resist it. But Western people are the ones that are pretending. It's amazing. I follow all these Muslim influencers on Twitter that I speak to. who are working extremely hard to get their societies to actually, I was going to use the word progressive, tainted by recent political movements, but like that are actually moving towards a much more sensible direction.

direction in places like the UAE, in places like Saudi Arabia, in places like Uzbekistan and others, right? And they're not doing so because they believe in democracy. They don't believe in democracy. These are authoritarian countries. But they're doing it because they know. They know that Islamism is not compatible with Muslim countries ruled in a kind of normal way. Because it just doesn't work. Because these people want a theocratic, fascist...

state covering the entire Middle East and as much of the rest of the world as they possibly can. And they will stop at nothing to achieve it. That's not compatible with anything. It's not even compatible with a Muslim country. No. That's why they're fighting it. And yet you have these people pretending that that's not the case. And that's why, another reason why they fight it is because more Muslims die at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists than anybody else. Right, of course.

Because there is a civil war happening within the Muslim world between the extremists and the rest, the people who believe in nation states, you know, authoritarianly ruled by monarchies mostly, but nonetheless, right? And the extremists. You've got these two sides. And no one in the Muslim world is pretending that this isn't happening. Because you have to have no brain.

To pretend it. But if you have no knowledge of this entire situation, you just go, I'd push back on that. I don't think it's because they have no brain. I think it's because they have imbibed an ideology and a worldview. which means that they simply cannot understand and see. They are blind to the nuances. What's the difference between that and what I said? Because I think it's worse.

I genuinely do. I think it's worse. Because if somebody doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand something, I think that's forgivable. Yeah, that's true. Whereas I think if someone is willingly blind and doesn't want to... or ignores it, I think that's willful, and that's far worse. Yeah, I think the truth is, though, that myth is breaking down very quickly, and I think we're not going to be able to pretend that everyone was the same for much longer, just because it doesn't work.

No. It doesn't work in practice. And I think that's what we're seeing in Britain. I think that's what we're seeing across Europe. We're seeing it everywhere now. People are, you know, I think it was, again, a brilliant Thomas Sowell line, which is you can ignore... you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. And that's where we are. That's exactly where we are. And I actually think with some of the, you know, like I've had a...

A couple of gigs cancelled and I've had people really push back. I've had people send me actually quite unpleasant messages saying horrible things to me. But I think now what this conversation has actually showed me... is that I think the reason the pushback is so vehement is because deep down that they know it. You wouldn't get this angry if you didn't realize that something was amiss with your line of argument.

You wouldn't get this furious, you wouldn't get this censorious if you didn't at some deep emotional level understand that your argument was deeply flawed and it was being exposed day in and day out. You can't keep going down this path and you can't keep advocating these positions without being aware that actually what is really going on is you effectively signing.

your own civilization's death warrant, which is what I think we're going to be seeing. That was a nice positive point to end on, mate. It is what it is. I was arrested for holding one of the most basic fundamental truths that we've known forever. Children are not born in the wrong body. Their immediate instinct was to call us fascists. And Chris asked, well, what about our free speech? We have a right to freedom of speech here, don't we?

And the police said, it doesn't work like that here. And we were arrested, strip searched, put in cells for a few hours. Why were you strip searched? If I get criminal charges, it will change my life quite substantially. It's quite a high cost for free speech. It's not good. It's not. It's not good at all.

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