Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 428 of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thurrogood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and today we bring you a conversation with Glenn Scrivener, Nate Morganlock, and Paul Feesey about Italy's new Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney. And so we hope you find this discussion interesting and helpful. So without further ado, I will hand straight over to the discussion.
SPEAKER_04Nate Morganlock. Hello.
SPEAKER_06Hello, good to have you both uh with us as always. Um Glenn, what are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_07We have all become experts in uh Italian politics uh in the last 36 hours ever since instant experts. Instant experts. We were experts in Ukrainian military strategy. Of course. Um then bec we became experts in inflation and uh monetary policy. And now we are experts in Georgia Maloney. We have turned our expertise.
SPEAKER_06Yep, we've all had a cornetto and beans beats for express. We're ready to go. That's it.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. So Georgia Maloney or Georgie Mellons, as I think she'd be known, if she was English from Rome. She's Romanesca.
SPEAKER_06Can't believe you're running with that. Georgia Mellons. That's what she'd be.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, Georgie Mellons. Salt to the earth, Georgie Mellons. Yeah. Uh but yes, is she is she far right, hard right, neo-fascist? How do we how do we put her into a box? Um what do we think about and because we are not in any way, shape, or form um experts in Italian politics whatsoever, uh we we thought we wouldn't let that stop us. That's never stopped us in the past. We want to talk about uh the place of personality in politics, the place of politics and cultural discourse, um, and also a kind of little primer in political philosophy and where we get ideas like left and right wing and hard right and nationalistic and fascistic and uh all these sorts of things, because I think that will help us, even even if we're not into the specifics of Georgia Maloney, it'll help us with our own thinking about the body politic and uh where Jesus fits into all things, because we're Christians and we look at things from a Christian point of view. We do.
SPEAKER_06And before we crack on with that though, you we wanted to mention a little bit about a vision evening we've got coming up. Is that right? So you gonna share a bit or is Nate gonna share a bit about this?
SPEAKER_04October 20th, Thursday, 8 p.m., October the 20th. We are going to be gathering online uh to think about the church and the meaning crisis. And this is a bit of a kind of um follow-on event from the Oak Hill Meaning Crisis event that you were involved in running.
SPEAKER_07Okay. Yeah, where I spoke to Tom Holland and Paul Van der Clay and Christy Mayer. And Christy Mayer will be uh there on the 20th of October talking about the meaning crisis, how to speak into it, and we'll have some uh sneak uh previews of 321, our evangelistic uh course that's going to take the world by storm next year. But uh no one has seen, well, pretty much only the people in this room have seen what we want to show you on October the 20th, and it's very exciting, and uh we'd love you to be there. So you need to go to speaklife.org.uk slash vision to go to our vision evening.
SPEAKER_06And if you didn't see the original kind of meaning crisis stuff with Paul Vanderclay and Tom Holland and uh Christy Mayer and all those people there, you can check that out on our channel already, can't you? Absolutely. And that might be a good kind of do people need to have seen that to to come, or is it just a good thing to see? No, but it'd be great to see. And uh yeah, they should like, share, and subscribe and tap that bell as well, shouldn't they? Absolutely. Absolutely. Great. Well, get signed up for that. Uh Nate.
SPEAKER_04We are gonna talk about uh Georgia Maloney, as we have said. Georgie Mellons. Georgie Mellons, Glenn's trying to get that one uh off the road.
SPEAKER_06Georgie Mellons happen. It's not gonna happen, Glenn.
SPEAKER_04But um so she's obviously uh uh significant politically because she's the new Italian Prime Minister, but she's also the first female Italian Prime Minister, which means that she's you know, she's she's gonna be covered. Uh her her uh premiership is gonna be covered maybe with more scrutiny. Uh but she's a she she has a kind of role in politics. And what was interesting for us, I think yesterday, for lots of people, that was the sharing of a very short uh clip of a speech that she gave at the World Council of the Family or something, World Conference on the Family, uh, in 2019 in Verona, and this little sort of two-minute clip was taken out of a 15-minute speech that she gave, I think. And so we're gonna have a little look at that and think through uh well, what is she saying? Why would this video clip get such traction online? Um, and what does it mean? What can we draw from it?
SPEAKER_07Brilliant. And in order to give you the entire speech, because I think I think we've the clip has become um very well liked and watched online. It's it's done numbers online, I think like 12 million views last time I I watched it. But it comes from a a longer speech that's kind of a barnstormer, like whether you agree with her or not, I mean in terms of her delivery. But we thought who could kind of bring to life and bring into English um her performance, and of course Thomas Thorogood, here our media producer at Speak Life, um, has done a great job. Thank you, Thomas. Putting it into English and and and bringing out all the Italianisms. AKA George Mellons.
SPEAKER_03As he will ever now be known. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've just arrived. I was doing the ironing. Then I found ten minutes to come and talk about politics with you. And really, this great attendance, in spite of all the controversy, is the best response you could have given to the protesters. Thank you to everyone for their work. Thank you, Brian Brown, Jacobo Corge, Tony Brandi, Massimo Gandolfini. Thank you to everyone who allowed this event to take place. Thank you for not giving in. Thank you for the courage. Thank you for the determination. Not just today, but for many years. Your work along with the work of many other associations has helped to keep certain issues that were destined to be removed from politics. You have kept them alive, active, and present. They said all sorts of things about this Congress. They said we want to go back to the past, that we're losers, that we're embarrassing, that we're unenlightened. They said it's scandalous for people to defend the natural family founded on marriage, to want to increase the birth rate, to want to place the correct value on human life, to support freedom in education, and to say no to gender ideology. I will send right back to the sender each of these accusations. I think the ones who want to go back to the past are those trying to bring back censorship by trying to stop an event like this taking place. I think it is unenlightened when a state, which is usually willing to sponsor any old thing, even exhibitions featuring a crucifix immersed in a beaker of pea, is a shame to sponsor an event like this. I say I say the losers are those with nothing better to do than come here and insult us while we talk about what we can do for the Italian family. But above all I say the embarrassing ones are not us. The embarrassing ones are those who support practices like womb for rent, abortion at nine months, and blocking the development of children with drugs at eleven years of age. That is embarrassing. They said all sorts of things about this Congress. They said all sorts of things about this Congress, that we want to limit the freedom of women, that we want them at home doing the ironing. Can you see me at home doing the ironing? Do you think I, the only female party secretary in Italy, who was a candidate for mayor of Rome while pregnant, for which I was criticized, do you think I want women to be chained to goodness knows where? It's exactly the opposite. We want to guarantee rights that today don't exist. The right of a woman to be a mother and not to have to give up working as a result. The right to be a mother, choose not to work and not to starve to death as a result. The right of a woman forced to have an abortion because she has no alternatives to have that alternative. Because it's not true that a woman's freedom to choose is guaranteed. If a woman only has the option to abort, that isn't the freedom to choose. The freedom to choose means having a choice. That is what we want to guarantee. We're here to defend women, to defend the family, to ask for things that we have brought to Parliament, like the infants' income, which we believe in more than the citizens' income. I say that sincerely. Funding for people who have children, because the whole of society benefits. We have proposed free nursery schools, open until shops close, and on Saturdays, to give mothers who work another option. We have asked for the full application of Law 194 for the reasons I mentioned, so economic support can be provided to women who commit and who prefer carrying their pregnancy to term, including in case of adoption. We have called for a moratorium at the UN to declare womb for rent a universal crime, because that really is degrading and abusive of women. We want to bring this issue to Europe. It's scandalous that one of the EU's priorities for funding is not the birth rate. The low birth rate is the biggest problem facing Europe. If we do not address this, everything else we do is pointless. If the EU has an Erasmus program for student mobility, if it has a horizon program for science, it can't have a program for families to increase the birth rate, to invest resources in the birth rate. But they think everything we propose is crazy. They think it's unenlightened that we want to take away rights, the Middle Ages. You know the Middle Ages were also the time of the cathedrals and the abbeys, the founding of the communion, the universities, the parliament, the epoch of Dante Petrarch, Boccaccio, Saint Francis, Saint Benedict, people who don't know where Matera is. Let's not expect them to have read history books. We have been attacked on a personal level. I have also been attacked. You should be ashamed of yourself. You talk about family based on marriage and had a child out of wedlock. Yes, I also talk about large families but only have one child. Ironically, when they say these things, they actually strengthen your position. It only shows that what I am calling for will not benefit me personally. I am calling for what I think will benefit Italian society. I believe the state should incentivize the natural family based on marriage. And if I'm not married, I do not expect the state to extend to me the same privileges that it does to married couples. That's the point. Pay attention. The point is I believe in a society where every choice has consequences and you accept responsibility for them. I reject a society where every desire becomes a right, every whim becomes a right, where I have no responsibilities, I own have only rights. I reject it. It's wrong. And I think it says a lot because I don't adopt a religious approach to any of this. I believe in God, but I don't adopt a religious approach. Why should I? I fight these battles because of secular common sense. I am a person who asks myself uncomfortable and profound questions, and I want answers to these questions that are credible. And all too often the high priests of single thinking are incapable of giving answers that make sense. And I have dozens of these questions. Is it right for a society to spend more energy and resources trying to find quick and easy ways to get rid of human life rather than trying to encourage it? Is that normal? Is that civilized? Is it right that you correctly cannot rip a newborn puppy from the bosom of its mother? But you can with a baby, the child of a desperate mother who sold it to two rich men? Why do Italian courts take away legal custody from two married parents, the natural parents of a baby girl, saying they are too old to raise her at fifty-two and fifty-four, taking away their natural daughter? But if two men over fifty go abroad and buy a child, that's fine. Why? Why why? Why if they told us why if they told us that the father of Yulana Englaro should be free to disconnect the plug that kept her alive because nobody knows better than a parent what is best for their child, why did the same not apply to the parents of Charlie God and Alfie Evans? Why is the winner always the one who wants to disconnect the plug? Why is the winner always death? How long before they define as pointless the life of a disabled or elderly person or anyone who doesn't correspond to the idea of a perfect consumer? How long? Why do we spend our time fighting all types of discrimination, but we pretend not to see the greatest ongoing persecution, the genocide of the world's Christians? Why? Please answer me these questions. This is about what we are doing here today. Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening? There is a single answer to all these questions because it defines us, because it is our identity, because everything that defines us is now an enemy. For those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves. And so they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity. I can't define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother, no. I must be citizen X, gender X, parent one, parent two, I must be a number. Because when I am only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators, the perfect consumer. That's the reason why. That's why we inspire so much fear. That's why this event inspires so much fear. Because we do not want to be numbers, we will defend the value of the human being. Every single human being, because each of us has a unique genetic code that is unrepeatable, and like it or not, that is sacred. We will defend it. We will defend God, country, and family. Those things that disgust people so much. We will do it to defend our freedom. Because we will never be slaves and simple consumers at the mercy of financial speculators. That's our is our mission. That is why I came here today. Chesterton wrote more than a century ago. Let's see if I can find it. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. That time has arrived. We are ready. Thank you.
SPEAKER_07Barnstormer, in terms of how it went down at the Tour de Force. Yes.
SPEAKER_04Sorry, World Congress of Families. Um Verona 2019. Uh I believe 29th or 31st of March. Okay. So you can go and check out who else was speaking and all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_07But yeah. Largely without notes. I mean, yeah. I mean she's she's got her stick, doesn't she? And so she gives the stick.
SPEAKER_04So from what we've seen, it's a bit of a stump speech. So particular famous um line, uh, italiana, don't madre, no, it's so sort of powerful. And that has been was such a um uh a common speech of hers to give that it's been um parodied online. Turned into a uh house tune, is that the right? Musical genre electronic music. Um yeah, so she's she's doing I was just making some notes there of of so so clearly most of our well, all of our engagement with Italian politics is through the this video, let's be honest, right? How many other Italian politicians can we name? How familiar were we with the particular constitutional arrangement of the Italian political system, all that sort of stuff. And so so we're presented with what in most cases online was was a sort of two-minute version, the bit at the end, um, and we're told this woman, this passionate, kind of energetic, kind of uh conservative, you know, family-oriented woman is the new Italian Prime Minister, and and therefore that's our access point. And I was just making some notes, the things that you get just from watching that video, you clearly get her passion. So you can see her, like, because she's speaking at such a rate. I mean, we sped up the video there, but but she's still speaking quick enough that she is breathing quite heavily. You can see her do that. Um you see her um her eyes, like whenever the the if you look online at the caricatures that are drawn of Maloney, they tend to focus on this kind of like these open wide eyes because she's so kind of thoughtful. And and rhetorically, if you're just looking at kind of the syntax, the the rhetorical devices she's using in speech and the way she's arranging her her kind of short sentences followed by sentences which kind of follow on from each other, this is really worthy of attention just as a piece of rhetoric. Right. Like it would be worthwhile just studying the arrangement of the speech and how she moves, how she appeals through the you know, um to the audience, how she gets them on side, how she knows to that an applause is coming. She's an absolute master. She knows exactly what she's doing. And I think because as a as a a caricature, which is how most of our politicians come to us, she doesn't quite fit some of the other kind of typical politicians that we've got out there. So I was trying to think, she so recently we've we've you know we got to know Ukrainian politics. Yes because of Vladimir Zelensky, right? And we talked a little bit about him being this warrior king, right? He he's shown in that mode. You don't see him in the suit, you know, you think of Zelensky wearing his military fatigue. Um then uh you've got Marin uh what's her name? Sana Marin, the Finnish Prime Minister, uh who recently was in the news because videos were leaked of her partying and you know what kind of uh drinking and drug taking was going on at these parties and all this sort of stuff. Is this a responsible way? And then so but she comes to us very young, kind of liberal, but she comes to us as a as the young party politician, kind of the breath of fresh air in that sense. Um and then you sort of think, you know, someone like uh Jacinda Arden, the uh New Zealand politician, and and we've only seen her for for those of us outside of New Zealand, we see her through these micro um media moments, and it it you're forced into a kind of caricature. That's the way that politics comes to us is in in stereotype and in in in larger than life characters.
SPEAKER_07And do you think partly that's why people are very nervous of her? So certainly like the the way the BBC would sort of introduce her, sometimes it would say hard right, sometimes it would say far right. Yeah, um, quite often the sentence was the the far right leader of a party and and the most right-wing politician that Italian politics has seen since Benito Mussolini, and putting Mussolini and her together in one sentence. And I guess we all know who else was a very good orator, don't we? Very fiery orator, you know, Eddie's stump speaks. Yeah, sorry.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. But and and that's the thing, and and but partly, and again, you I I don't know, right? Maybe she's gonna be awful, maybe she's gonna be absolutely terrible. No idea what she's gonna be like as a uh as a politician and prime minister. The chances are she's not gonna last very long because from what I've read, yeah, Italian politics is very kind of fluid and losses moving around and all coalition.
SPEAKER_07I told I told Nate this before, but I I don't think you know the answer to this. Like, how many governments have there been in Italy since the war?
SPEAKER_06Since the war.
SPEAKER_07Since 45.
SPEAKER_06Oh I I don't know. Uh let's say 15.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. 69. The average for longevity. No term of anyone in office is 1.1 years. So like 13 months. And it's all coalition, all coalition governments. So like however, like let's let's say she is an incredibly dangerous person, you know, she's got maybe 13 months in a coalition government. She has to do some damage. She has to do some damage. But um yeah, it's a and and like I heard somebody try to explain like the voting system in Italy, and it just like I just could not keep everything in my head. They've slimmed down the number of ministers and like by a third, and like one third of them are by first past the post, and two thirds of them are by proportional representation, and like different MPs can stand in different constituencies, and if they don't get into one, they can stand to more than one in more than one. It's just like it's it's not only do you rank politicians, it's like politicians rank their constituencies somehow at all. Kind of yeah. So yeah, and and so but but maybe that's uh as well where people see a danger is that she she and her party wants to bring a more presidential style of of government and put more powers in the executive branch.
SPEAKER_04I mean, Italy has got a history of of rulers sort of saying, are you going back quite a long way now?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, quite a long way.
SPEAKER_04Okay, back to the Caesars. Um no, but the the other thing, and I suppose this is quite an important part of um in fact no, I'll get to that in one second. Just on the issue of look at that speech and how does she whip up the crowd? How does she appeal to felt need? How does she appeal to popular news items from 2019? Right, there's a couple of references there that you're like, oh yeah, I remember Alfie Evans was a name that was very familiar to people for a time. So she's got this kind of sense, and people would say, Well, of course, this is what happened in the 1930s in the j in Germany because Hitler was was was feeding on this sense of uh anger, this sense that you know there was a group of people being overlooked, they were being called unenlightened, we should be embarrassed by our viewpoints. Um you know, and and American politics recently has had this same thing about the basket of deplorables and Trump kind of really kind of um being being a figurehead for so many MAGA country people felt left behind. And and so uh people have that concern, but it's almost as though that's the only thing you can say, right? Is to say, oh, this sounds like 1930 Germany. It's like, well, everything's gonna sound like 1930 Germany then, yeah, because anything that appeals to a group, a populace or a group of people in a in a country who feel that there is a there is an elite, there is a metropolitan elite who've moved on is always gonna be appealed to. The the other thing I wanted to come back to though, um and this is what is ve we can't really tell because of course we just hear uh Italian, we can't hear her accent. So we can't hear that she comes from uh you know a a particular uh part of Rome or she's from she's Roman-esque, and so the equivalent to that would be like an Essex girl, so Georgie Mellons becomes that sort of thing making it a thing, but um yeah, so in terms of US, probably the equivalent to an Essex girl would be kind of the Jersey Shore, so we think of New Jersey and and and that sense of you know lacking in the sophistication that you know other kind of more um enlightened groups of people might have. Um and you don't see that.
SPEAKER_07We we don't see that, and we don't hear that because we're not aware of the difference, and because Thomas just refused to do the accent for us, he really did yeah, did his George Mellons over there.
SPEAKER_01It's I mean it's it is the best story ever told. Christianity is. I mean, whether it's true or not is a different matter. But but as a matter of historical record, it is the most compelling story.
SPEAKER_03That was historian Tom Holland speaking about mission in the meaning crisis, and there's plenty more where that came from. With the help of Christy Mayer, we'll be diving into this very topic during the Speak Life Vision evening. And you, yes you, are invited. It's happening from 8 to 9.30pm UK time on Thursday the 20th of October. To sign up, go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash vision. Along with hearing from Christy Mayer and the Speak Life team, you'll get a first sneak peek at our new evangelistic course and you'll be the first to know about our exciting plans for creative evangelism. This really is a unique opportunity, and it's completely free. Whether you've been following Speak Life for hours or for years, whether you live in England or Djibouti, join us over Zoom as we think about the future of Speak Life. That's Thursday, the 20th of October, 8 pm. Let's tell the greatest story of all time.
SPEAKER_07I think like I'm I'm gonna give many, many caveats to to um what we say about this. I I I think there's a there's a reason why the the last two minutes of that did so well on Twitter, and I and I think there's a recapturing of the meaning of family within the body politic, and I I think that's absolutely crucial. I will give some some very um clear kind of caveats to to to all of um my kind of my tick to that. Um but I I think the problem is you can't say anything either good, well you you you can't say anything good or or bad about certain politicians because that they are either you know the messiah or they are Satan. And why why are they one or the other? And it's because we've elevated politics to the point where religion ought to be. You know, like God should be there. In the vacuum, politics has ascended, and and so like we we either look to a politician like Georgia Maloney and and see the great hope, you know, for us in in messianic terms, or we see the great threat, yeah, and she's just like Hitler. And it just goes to show like how politics has just ascended into the place of honor that that really God should God should have. Um so if people hear us say um, I liked that two minutes from Georgia Maloney, um, uh, that is not us. You know, if she goes on to you know annex Poland, take Europe slice by slice, we're not endorsing all aspects of it. You know, I I um wrote to a a friend who's uh planting a church in in Italy, and I sort of said, What do you make of Georgia Maloney? And he said, Well, I I'm not able to vote yet in Italy, but if I could, I don't think I would. He said, largely because of the coalition that she's sort of forming around herself with Berlusconi and um with Matteo Silvini, Salvini. Um and he he was like, I I I don't think I think she's pro-family, great, but I think some of the people she's surrounding herself with aren't aren't that helpful, and she's had a a history in neo-fascism and that that sort of thing. And um he says, I I can I can believe that she's taken that journey out of neo-fascism, but there are there are some unsavory types around her.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, so she was part of a neo-fascist party when she was very young. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, but saying that Liz Truss was a liberal democrat. Yes. We've all been on Jimmy. So haven't we?
SPEAKER_07Everyone and and the clip that everyone has brought out of Liz Truss when the Queen Just Died was like how she was anti-royalist and she didn't think anyone should be in the royal family. Oh yeah, yeah, when she was a teenager. So reading at the funeral of the Queen.
SPEAKER_04But again, Liz I mean, and Liz Truss, it's like it's the obvious comparison. But you think yeah, you can't compare the two. Like it well. We can't compare the two. And we will. But but and that that but the the the personality in the character is is magnified because what they're shown to us in these video clips. And and largely our confidence in our politicians is how they come across in a speech or how they're able to deal with with an interviewer. Yeah, and if you if they've someone's like very good with their words and they're able to kind of work it well, then then they're a great politician. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06On the other hand, it's about the amplification of personality and character. I think unfortunately, Liz's problem is even when you amplify that, wow, there's nothing to amplify to begin with. Wow. So you still end up with nothing. No personality, no character.
SPEAKER_07But this is this is where the story out begins. This is it. This is her redemption, is it? You know the the Queen oversaw 15 Prime Ministers from Churchill to Truss. Okay, but maybe now is Truss's turn to become a Churchill. It's Truss time. It's trust time. Should we just as a comparison, should we should we have a should we have a look at some of the oratory skills of Liz Truss?
SPEAKER_04I really want to see another clip of of uh Giorgio Maloney first, though.
SPEAKER_07That'll do. Yeah, perfect consumer. Yeah, right. And now should we see Liz Truss? This is from before she was PM.
SPEAKER_00In a fortnight, I'm going to Paris for the world's largest food trade firm, and I will be bigging up British products. In December, I'll be in Beijing, opening up new pork markets.
SPEAKER_07Thomas Thomas needs to actually do a translation of that to turn it into English.
SPEAKER_04But yeah. Oh But that's it, but you want like exactly as you say, like you can be persuaded by a powerful not just a politician, but rhetorician, right? And and and we often quote the the Fry and Lo and Laurie were talking about language sketch where he says, you know, is English too ironic to sustain Hitlerian styles? Would we simply have laughed? And it's like, is English too ironic to sustain Malonean styles? Right? Is it so? If someone spoke with the passion and energy that she speaks with, I I don't know. Like, whereas Liz Liz just, by golly, she's English.
SPEAKER_06Oh, look at that. We'll just see if she delivers on these pork markets. Don't talk to me now.
SPEAKER_07All talk, no pork. It's easy to talk a big pork game. But maybe you were you were thinking like who are who are the English equivalents of of Georgia Maloney? But uh but I think on lay on Labour side, there's like Jess Phillips or Angela Rayner, or I thought uh Kemi Badenach, like a fiery speech in in the Commons when she was a equality secretary. That's that's kind of going or Catherine Burbel Singh, who's not in politics, but you know another woman on the right who's kind of for uh conservative in in in certain regards. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, what so okay, so Maloney's not without precedent completely, but it it it there is something about her as a as an identifiable political caricature, political cartoon, that you can see why she's you know, we're talking about her.
SPEAKER_07Yeah because you know she can do it. Okay, so we've talked about the the personality. Let's let's talk about some political philosophy. Um to set in context you know, why is she called right wing or hard right or far right, why is she linked to fascism or linked to Mussolini? Why is nationalism a kind of a word that's sort of used? And I and I thought I'd prepare some slides for us all so we can have a little crash course in uh political philosophy. And uh do you know why left and right wing are the the terms that we use to describe a a person on the political spectrum? Any ideas? Anyone at home? Anyone at home know why we use a building there? The wings of a building? Well, it's it's yes, it's in a building, the National Assembly, in Paris in 1789, French Revolution. Those to the right of the president and those to the left of the president. Those to the right of the president were pro-monarchy, right, and pro-religion.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Jokers on the right. The jokers on the left. The clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Um, here I am, stuck in the middle as a centrist dad. Yeah, that's that's how it how that's how it worked. And on the left, you're pro-republic, pro-revolution, probably anti-church, anti-monarchy, right? And so as people sort of lined up in that assembly, it became, you know, what people spoke of in terms of left and right wing. Um so if you're on the left, you're more into a revolutionary sort of you're progressive, you're not looking to the past, you're looking to the future. And if you're on the right, you're more of a traditionalist, more of a conservative. Um and so that that's kind of stuck with us. Uh on the next slide, uh, Wikipedia says generally the left wing is characterized by an emphasis on ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform, and internationalism, while the right wing is characterized by an emphasis on notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction, and nationalism. Uh now, there are all sorts of intersecting ideas that are going on there. Um, because you can be a you can be a liberal leftist or you can be an authoritarian leftist, you can be a liberal right winger or an authoritarian right winger, you can be an internationalist leftist or a nationalist leftist, you can be an internationalist right winger or a nationalist right winger. But the these are kind of where we tend to line up on things. On the next slide, uh Jonathan Hait 10 years ago now wrote The Righteous Mind to talk about the psychological origins of where we line up on uh on the political spectrum. And he talked about these kind of moral foundations that are a bit like taste buds that we have. Down the bottom on the on the left, you see care versus harm. Um that is, you know, we have a moral intuition that if you're caring, you're good, if you're harmful, you're bad. Um, or liberty and oppression, freedom or otherwise, uh, that's another sort of moral taste bud, moral foundation. Fairness or cheating uh is something that's important to us. Loyalty or betrayal is important to us, authority or subversion is important to us, and sanctity and degradation are important to us. And what Jonathan Haidt realized after getting tens and tens of thousands of people to do his moral foundation survey is that those who identified on the left pretty much only had two moral foundations. They only really cared about care versus harm and about liberty versus oppression. And they cared a little bit about fairness versus cheating. Whereas those who um identified on the right wing actually had a pretty evenly distributed um appreciation for all kinds of moral foundations. And so that kind of maps on a little bit to um my book, uh The Air We Breathe, on the next slide, where I go through seven values that the Jesus Revolution has kind of brought to the world. Starting with equality and then compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress. And actually, where we all camp out on is equality and compassion, pretty much. Um we all want this sense of fairness, that we're all equals before the law, and we all have this sense of care for people and being merciful, uh, looking after the weakest members of our society. Um but because those are two that everybody agrees on, whether we agree on the importance of religion or sanctity, degradation, tradition, that sort of thing, everybody camps out on is it equitable, is there diversity, is there inclusion? Um and so the left tends to have a kind of a uh a monopoly on the language of diversity, inclusion, and equity. But I think they are foundations that are found on both the left and the right. And what we've noticed over the past few decades on the next slide is something about the Overton window. Elon Musk tweeted this out uh in April of this year, and it's got uh in 2008, um, there's left wing versus right wing, and there's a little figure in the middle called me, and he's left of center in 2008, and he's got a fellow liberal by his side. And then by 2012, um his fellow liberal um has raced leftwards, and he's finding himself closer towards the center, and there's the there's the right-wing conservative uh over there on the right. And then 2021, the center is now massively to the right of him. Um his left-wing friend um is all the way over into the woke progressive kind of uh mode, calling everybody else a bigot. And the conservative has stayed has stayed exactly the same. Um Elon Musk has stayed exactly where he is, but he's found himself to be a right winger. And what people talk about is um the Overton window, which is sort of the the window of acceptable political discourse. What it is possible to say out loud and in polite society and not be deemed to be either a fascist or um a communist, right? And that has sort of headed leftwards uh quite a lot, such that there are a whole bunch of people who consider themselves pretty center or centre left, who are now considered right wing because of the way culture has gone in that direction of diversity, inclusion, and and equity. And so and so you get to the BBC calling Georgia Maloney right wing or hard right. And honestly, I don't know. I don't know what that means. You know, is she right wing in 2008 terms? Is she right wing in 2022 terms? Is she right wing in 1930s terms? That's really important to figure out. But just using the word right wing often doesn't tell you very much.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, anyone right of me is now far right. Some people isn't it?
SPEAKER_07Far right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so that's that's kind of the the the left-wing thing. And and then um on the next slide, I've got some stuff about nationalism. So she's a nationalist, she believes in borders, she believes in controls on immigration, she believes in it's important to believe in family and your locality.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I mean the name of her party, right, is the the Brothers of Italy. Right. Yeah. Which you know, we sort of Brotherhood? Yeah. Oh goodness, that sounds dangerous. And why do you need to keep saying your country's name? The non-gendered. What's wrong with it? Yeah, fellow citizens. But what you know, th that emphasis on the on the name of the country. Yeah, right. It's you know, what's the um Yeah, just just there was a there was a lot of surprise this week that the Labour Party sang the new national anthem at their conference and had a gigantic uh Union Jack flag uh behind them as they all stood to sing it. And then someone went, Oh, I thought that this looks like the BNP. You're like, right, okay. So that's that's a thing now.
SPEAKER_06The default if you sing if you sing the national anthem, yeah, and there's a flag. There's a flag. Yeah, it's like any football match. Yeah, there yeah.
SPEAKER_07A little Englander. Yeah. We sneer at the little Englanders, don't we?
SPEAKER_04And and and so therefore to have have the name of your country in your political party. It's like, well, that's obviously you hate all other countries.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, UKIP.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because why else would you feel the need to keep referencing where you live? Well, maybe you do feel the need to keep referencing where you live because you're not sure that you live where you live, or you're not it doesn't feel like that matters anymore, which is to come to the point on anywhere's versus somewheres.
SPEAKER_06I mean, we do think that, don't we, but yet it's not applied to the case of the SP, is it? Right. Yeah, the SP are not seen as a pride cymry as well as. Yeah, that's seen as kind of a left-wing nationalist. Yeah, pride comries, yeah, same kind of thing. Left wing nationalists.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and so that that's why the dimension of left-right is less and less important these days, and more and more important is nationalist versus globalist. Or as David Goodhart has put it, the um the somewhere's who are located and rooted versus the anywheres who are more cosmopolitan, they can sort of live live kind of anywhere. And probably the best way of figuring out the difference between somewheres and anywheres is to hear David Goodhart give his explanation. It's uh it's a very good two minutes.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to Britain's hidden divide. Anywares versus somewheres. The old divides are superseded. Our country is now split into two rival value blocks. The anywheres versus the somewheres. Anywares tend to be educated and mobile. They value autonomy, openness and fluidity. They see the world from well, anywhere. Somewares tend to be more rooted and less well educated. They value group attachments, familiarity and security. They see the world from particular places, from somewhere. We Anywares are mainly graduates and affluent. We are less than a quarter of the population, but we dominate politics and society, regardless of which party is in power. Here are four examples. One, a knowledge economy designed for the highly educated, and an hourglass labour market that has wiped out the middling job that used to give some was status. Two, universities. We massively expanded higher education, a world that our children flourish in, but we eviscerated the technical training that used to give some was decent jobs. Three, mass immigration. We ignored, or labelled as xenophobic, the discomfort that many people felt from rapid ethnic change across the country. 4. An anti-domesticity family policy that has represented the interests of some professional women but has done nothing to stop the decline of the traditional family. We anywhere care about the world, but we can be guilty of a kind of self-regard and a naive liberalism too. We're wary of most group identities because we just don't feel them ourselves. But it's not chauvinistic to value your national identity, and it's not racist to feel more comfortable amongst people like yourself. We, anyways, have ruled in our own interests and called it the national interest. On June the 23rd, the Sumheres said, enough. It's time for a new settlement in British politics.
SPEAKER_07So that's June 23rd of uh 2016. Uh the referendum on Brexit. Um, and of course, that's the most obvious way that the anywhere versus somewhere sort of split was was manifested. But it's all over politics. And of course, Italy has had its own relationship with the EU and with the Euro, and and certainly uh Georgia Maloney has been much more Eurosceptical in the past. I think she sort of made her peace with being in the EU. Um but um but the idea that you would feel very rooted is actually what most of the population feels. The idea that you can kind of live anywhere, it doesn't matter where you were born, you'll go away to university, and then you'll go to the big smoke and get your job, and then you'll get transferred to the New York office and then the Rio de Janeiro office. That that's a a very small proportion of society, actually. And the great majority of people in the UK live within 20 miles of where they were when they were 14 years old, and only 5% of the world lives outside of the country where it was born. Um and yet the the anywheres, as he said, totally control the media, totally control education, the arts, journalism. Um, and so we get we get very much an anywhere view of politics, for instance, and journalism. And the anywhere's view of the somewheres is usually a very derogatory one. You know, the the sneering, there's the little Englander who's got their who's got their little English flag out just because it's the World Cup, and you know. Um and so that that's playing into as well um how do we see Georgia Maloney, how do we how do we see a party that's got you know the the name of the country in its title.
SPEAKER_04And that sense of um physical location. So the idea that you know you you you live in a particular place and these fields and these hills and these woods, and I remember when this was, you know, nothing but fields and and that sense of a physical location it I think that is also what's going on in the video that went viral of Georgia Maloney speaking at the um World Congress of the Family is that she's not talking about the physical location but the physical embodiment of people. So people having uh having physical relationships and family relationships and that those are not to be easily dismissed or eradicated. Um so one of the the issues she picks out there is a womb for rent and the idea of surrogacy and just how how alien an idea that is that you know the woman who who carried the child would then have nothing to do with the raising of the child and and the importance of family.
SPEAKER_07Obviously, at the extremes of left and right, you have kind of communism fascism, which uh are very much coming out of a 19th century liberalism that we're going to see a reaction to that liberalism. Uh with communism, you've got common owners ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, Karl Marx said, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. It's very internationalist, uh, is communism very much into the equality, and I I guess into the compassion thing, um, certainly a version of it in terms of uh communism on the far left, and it you know killed people in its tens of millions. Um on the far right, we've got fascism. Uh Mussolini said, everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Um and Umberto Echo uh talks about fascism as the cult of tradition, the rejection of modernism, the cult of action for action's sake, disagreement is treason, fear of difference, appeal to a frustrated middle class, obsession with a plot, life is permanent warfare, contempt for the weak, everybody is educated to become a hero, machismo, and selective popularism. And it very much um Mussolini and Hitler, obviously the and and Franco are kind of the big European exponents of fascism. And what's interesting out of that is when you ask, you know, what are the death tolls on either side, they are significant. You know, significant death tolls uh to fascism, significant death tolls to communism, but probably communism wins in terms of bloodshed. Um and yet I was just thinking um over.
SPEAKER_04Just by the numbers are bigger than the numbers of people killed.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I mean, and you know, Stalin, tens and tens and tens of millions, you know, dying dying at at the hands of his communist regime, Mao similarly. So uh both both are incredibly dangerous, and yet I think you could probably walk down the street with a hammer and sickle t-shirt a bit easier than walking down the street with a swash sticker on, you know. Um and I think Tom Tom Holland makes the point, you know, why is that? Well, I I think communism claims to honour the equality and compassion things, whereas Nazism, it was the complete inversion of that, you know, that there is very much a master race and a slave race, and we are going to exterminate the slave race, and so equality and compassion are totally out the window. So even though both of them have killed tens of millions of people, fascist um becomes or Nazi, you know, becomes like the epithet to throw at someone that you that you really don't like. So that that's let's throw that into the mix as we think about um Georgia Maloney and what's going on there. And then on the next slide, both communism and fascism are kind of uh reactions to kind of a 19th-century liberalism that kind of grew up out of the Enlightenment, which itself came out of um medieval Christendom. And it very much prized individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. And what people want to do is kind of hold on to those liberal goods in the middle. And uh on the next slide, there's John Rawls, who uh in his theory of justice, very influential work 50 years ago, said what you want to do to build up your society is to imagine pe imagine somebody in the original position, they are behind a veil of ignorance, and you ask that person, you don't know what place you're going to hold in the society that you design. What kind of society are we going to have? And he said, obviously, you would not want to have too much inequality because you might end up being the downtrodden class. And so you'd obviously be a a roughly liberal-minded person with social mobility and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_04Which is why you get your children, one of your children gets to break the chocolate bar and the other one gets to choose which half they get. Exactly. Yeah. That's the veil of equality played out on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_07On a daily basis. And quite rightly, you know, that leads to equality, which which we all kind of love. But what's been happening, and what happened in extreme forms with communism and fascism, was the individualism of that just didn't work for people. Um but we're seeing that the individualism doesn't really work for people in all sorts of ways. And I got to talk to um Louise Perry over the summer who um describes herself as a materialist feminist or a post-liberal feminist. And she said in that video, and I urge you to sort of check it out, she's got a great book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. And in it she's basically saying: behind that veil of ignorance, in John Rawls's vision, is an individual who is unentangled by any kind of family requirements or responsibilities, obligations. It's just a choosing individual, which sounds like a grown-up, and to be honest, it sounds like a man, and it certainly suits men who are not biologically entangled with children. If a man has children, he's not really entangled with them if he doesn't want to be. A woman is absolutely entangled with children if she wants to be. And therefore, liberalism has suited male interests in a massive way, and that individualism has been the destruction of the family. What would it look like to put a woman behind the veil of ignorance or to put a family behind the veil of ignorance? What would it look like to think that the atom that makes up society is not uh a masculine individual, but is an entangled family that is dependent on one another? Um, what kind of politics would you get from that? And so Louise Perry is asking all the right questions. And when she came across Georgia Maloney's uh video, she said the next great uh political battle is the defense of the human, personal, local, intimate, particular, against economic forces that would turn us all into thoughtless, loveless, fungible consumers, and Georgia Maloney knows it. So I I think there you've got a very interesting feminist critique um of individualism that has not served us well, and that actually you can see a Georgia Maloney um as a feminist hero as well. You know, perhaps her pro-family s stance is to put entanglement and responsibility and obligation and love at the heart of your body politic, as opposed to a single choosing individual.
SPEAKER_04Don Amad I know. She says, Paul, are you fungible? Do you feel fungible? Um only on the weekends? On a regular basis. Oh yeah, I I'd love that uh Louise Perry tweet. Yeah. Really, yeah, understanding that the and and explaining why that video worked out worked so well and and was so has been so popular over the last 36 hours or whatever it's been. Um because this in this Georgia uh Maloney is speaking about a a fundamental question of how we arrange society and and what's important.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_07I d uh maybe at this point I can sort of add some of the caveats. And I've I've I loved what she said about family, um, but I I will like raise these caveats. Can her pro-family views be calculated and or cynical and or hypocritical and or distractions? I think absolutely they can be, you know. Can they be calculated? Um yes, because I think really why she wants family is because she wants higher birth rates for Italians, and she's worried about immigration, and she's she's worried about Islamification. I think she is, right? Is it calculated? Is it cynical in that she knows that trad Catholics will lap it up? Right? She knows that she knows it will. Okay. Just raising the question. The answer might be no, it's not calculated, no, it's not cynical, but might it be? Thirdly, might it be hypocritical? Um, because if she is really interested in traditional Christian sexual ethics, then she would follow them more. And she, you know, she's in that video, she said, I haven't really followed traditional Christian sexual ethics, actually. And so there's a there's a degree of, oh, we we love Georgia Maloney because she's totally into traditional Christian sexual ethics, and she's not. Like politically, she has one one way of expressing herself. She lives out a slightly different way of living, right? So is it calculated, is it cynical, is it hypocritical, is it a distraction? Could all the pro-family stuff be distracting us from other unsavory alliances that she's making with other less savory figures on the right of Italian politics? And we're getting distracted by that and over there. Now the answer to all those questions might be no. She's not calculated, this is not cynical, it's not hypocritical, it's not a distraction, it's all brilliant. But I've I've inserted my little caveats there. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04The possibility that she might be a politician. Have you considered? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and that's one of the things that's interesting in that uh in the context of that video, and I know we I keep coming back to this, but it would be very easy to to just see that two-minute video clip and to assume that this was Georgia Maloney's victory speech, having just become the Prime Minister of Italy. Yeah. And so she stands up and she says this these things, which would mean that you know, well, it'd just be a remarkable way of r responding if that was your speech. Um I haven't seen a victory speech, but but but the the context of this being a you know an international movement towards the family and involved in the politics in all sorts of different countries, um, and known as a as a sort of right-wing conservative thing, um, and treated as such in various countries. But again, the the she's not actually at that point asking for a vote.
SPEAKER_07Right.
SPEAKER_04She is m making a comment. Now she's using some loose terms as well, like you know, she says they, they don't want this, and they don't want that, and you sort of who do you mean? Who what's going on here? Yeah, and there was an interesting uh issue that uh she uses the phrase um financial speculators, is that right?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And a couple of people uh commenting on the under the sharing of this video was sort of like, you know, she means the Jews. It's a dog whistle. Like, oh, you sound like a dog. Because how are you out of the yeah? She means the Jews. In fact, maybe she does mean the Jews, but the fact that you heard this and your first thought was, oh, she means the Jews. This is and you sort of think, yeah, that again, one of those things you you don't want to say, oh, here's a fantastic video. I'm 100% behind this woman in every single thing that she thinks. Yeah, yeah. Of course you don't want to say that, but at the same time, you don't want to sort of go, Oh, because of her powers of persuasion, because of her rhetoric, and because of some of these concerns, therefore she must be hard right, fascistic as they come, and we're all doomed. It's like we don't know enough about this yet.
SPEAKER_07Let's give this some and it just goes to show how kind of impoverished our political discourse is, that the yeah, the only mythology we can plug this into is the 1930s. Like the like the World War World War II is our kind of moral framework. And so if if she does mean something nefarious by this, it must be anti-Semitic because she's Hitler. And that's the way we kind of just default to it's she's either the Messiah or she's Adolf. And yeah, and maybe it's more complicated than that, but I I I find it very heartening that whatever she thinks about this and whatever she wants to do about this, it's clearly resonating with people, right? Like putting putting the family at the heart of politics more than just putting the choosing individual at the at the heart of politics. Um the the fact that loads of people are going, yeah, that's brilliant. And the and and treating people as you know fungible products and the financial speculators like that's true. We do see how the markets are just kind of trading us away. And I don't I I don't think it was about the Jews. I I think it's about the markets. And um, you know, she because she is a conservative, but not a Margaret Thatcher kind of conservative that says let the free market have its way. I mean, she's totally into protectionistic kind of trade policies and and Italy first kind of and and actually, you know, uh a bit more big state than than a Margaret Thatcher would be. She she is um she is very suspicious of the markets and what the markets do to us little atomized individual consumers that that we are. And so Yeah, I I don't think that is anti-Semitic. But that that's where she's coming from. And the fact that it's popular just shows okay, there's a there's another way to look at things and it's quite popular.
SPEAKER_04You you can be popular by talking about family and God and things that are and and that sense of the of globalism, whilst you know people might have sort of ideas that there are these human rights and there are these concerns for you know the treatment of people ethically and and and want desire to kind of raise people's living standards around the world and to be conscious of how our consumer choices are affecting things. The global corporations are not are famously not you know known for for treating their employees, the environment, their customers with a real sense of dignity.
SPEAKER_07Or sweatshop workers in the in the countries that you claim to care about. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And you know, um and and that concern that the human being is not is is not tailor-made to become a perfect consumer, as she as she references in there. Even just stopping and and looking at that and saying how much of our thinking about our lives is governed by consumption and governed by our consumer choices. How much do we define ourselves by the way that we spend our money and earn our money and how much of it we have? And there's something actually quite liberating about saying, well, maybe maybe you're you are more than a customer. Yeah. In fact, there are all these other much more profound relationships that you have.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Umce Louise Perry's tweet the next great political battle is the defense of the human, personal, local, intimate, particular against economic forces that would turn us all into thoughtless, loveless, fungible consumers. So if that's if that's the direction that you know Italy heads in a little bit more, then whatever else happens, that's that's for the good, I'd say.
SPEAKER_06Great. Well, lots to talk about there, guys. Uh lots of interesting thoughts. And I mean we'll see how this one ages, I guess. When she annexes Austria or you know, Switzerland, Willem. Yeah. If you're watching this in five years, we welcome our Italian overlords. Uh no, we're not and uh uh yeah, so let us know what you think down in the comments. Uh give us a bit of a like and a subscribe, and uh do you think about having a look into our vision evening that we've got coming up? Uh head over to speaklife.org.uk forward slash vision to sign up there and find out a bit more about it. Don't forget to check out the uh meaning crisis video we've already done with Tom Holland and Paul Van der Clay and Christy Mayer. That'd be a good kind of primer for that um if you've got time to look at it. Um but apart from that, guys, thank you very much. Thank you. And uh join us again next time. See ya. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_03Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening to the Speak Life podcast. I have to say that's probably the fastest I've ever spoken. Speaking uh in English to an Italian woman, talking very passionately and very quickly. And yes, I know we have been bombarding you with adverts for our vision evening, but we we really do think that you'll enjoy it. We're really excited about it, and we'd love to have you along to chat about the future of Speak Life and uh where we can take creative evangelism. Um, we're really passionate and excited about the work we do here. So thankful uh to God for the resources he has given us uh and all the people like yourselves who listen to our content and share our content and seem to be blessed by it uh from things that we hear. So God bless you all. Thanks so much for listening. Sign up to the vision evening at speaklife.org.uk forward slash vision, and we will see you next time.