#010 - Frank Furedi: The Elite Won't Reform Itself. We Have To Replace It.

Dr. Frank Furedi is an author, social commentator and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. Author of more than 26 books, Furedi’s studies have been devoted to an exploration of the cultural developments in western societies. In recent years he has published several studies on the impact of the Culture Wars on family life, socialisation, education and public life. His most recent book, 100 Years of Identity Crisis, argues that it disrupts the socialisation of young people and encourages the estrangement of generations from one another.

In this episode Frank and I talk about populism as a reaction to liberal elites and their policies; the nature of culture wars; the longstanding conflict in values between the European Union and the central European Visegrad countries and how this is spreading to Western European countries; the role of democracy in challenging the status quo; and the need to continue creating spaces for honest conversation.

Show notes
- Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values between Hungary and the EU: Amazon.co.uk: Furedi, Frank: 9781138097438: Books
- You can follow Frank's work at his Substack: Roots & Wings with Frank Furedi | Substack

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, classmates. Welcome to Thinking Class. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Frank Ferredi. Frank is an author and social commentator and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. Author of more than 26 books, Frank's studies have been devoted to an exploration of the cultural developments in Western societies. In recent years, he has published several studies on the impact of the culture wars on family life, socialization, education, and public life. His most recent book, 100 Years of Identity Crisis, argues that it disrupts the socialization of young people and encourages the estrangement of generations from one another. His research has been oriented towards the way that risk and uncertainty is managed by contemporary culture, and his two influential books, The Culture of Fear and Paranoid Parenting, investigated the interaction between risk consciousness and perceptions of fear, trust relations, and social capital in contemporary society. Frank's studies on the problem of fear has run in parallel with his exploration, the challenges faced by the ideals of liberty and tolerance in the contemporary world. In this episode, Frank and I talk about populism as a reaction to liberal elites and their policies, the nature of culture wars, the long-standing conflict in values between the European Union and the Central European Visigrad countries, and how this is now spreading to Western European countries, the role of democracy in challenging the status quo, and the need to continue creating spaces for honest conversation. I really enjoyed this episode with Frank today. He really gets to the point on some of the biggest topics of today, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, classmates. To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes. Hi, Frank. Welcome to Thinking Class. Thanks so much for joining me. Pleasure. I've followed your work uh for a good few years now. You've written prodigiously on populism and culture wars, which I think is a rather pressing topic by the day. And one of your books that I read with interest a few years ago was Populism and the European Culture Wars, which came out in 2018. And it was about the conflict of values between Hungary, uh where you're from originally, and the European Union. And in it you spoke of the hostility of liberal elites to um Eurosceptics, tradition, small tea conservatism, and national sovereignty. And I guess in a year that seems poised in a year of many elections to potentially bring a tide of change, perhaps everywhere but the the UK and the media reaction to that, um it seems it seems like that book is is even very relevant now. Um so with this kind of never-ending wave of populist victories that we've seen since 2016 and liberal leaders frequently being shocked, uh why is that? Is it is it because they they fail to see that that populism's a blowback to the policies which they believe in so much?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Well, I think they are, first of all, out of touch. And uh, you know, we live in a world where people talk to people like themselves, and certainly people that are uh part of the cultural political establishment, have their own vocabulary, they have their own worldview, uh, they are very much insulated from the problems of everyday life. And as a result, there's a kind of psychic distance between the vast majority of the people and uh the people that are meant to be representing them. And that's one of the reasons why they don't really understand that there's a lot of people throughout Europe who feel left out of the conversation and who would like very much to be taken seriously, and who regard themselves as citizens, they're they're mature adults, rather than children that are that are being lectured at all the time. So I think what has happened is that the cumulative effect of uh of not taking seriously what people need and what people want, this continuous hectoring and lecturing uh the population, the continuous projects that they kind of invent, which isn't really a result of popular pressure but it comes out of their own head, has led to a situation where increasingly the mainstream political parties are finding it very, very difficult to maintain themselves. They're losing ground, and these new groups of populists are making headway.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

You've written on your Substack about some of these um top-down projects, uh, and I I I think it's starting to come into people's consciousness more and more that uh there are not um there is not necessarily a democratic support for some of these top-down projects, but but the concept top-down, and I think people always always understand. Have you got an example of some of the top-down projects that you think people are bridling against in these upcoming um uh democratic elections?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Well, I I in there are many many of them. Uh, the most important top-down project which uh irritates people are the ones that are linked to uh net zero environmental policies. Because basically what has happened is that increasingly uh on the grounds of saving the planet, people's everyday life is being uh regulated and controlled. And people are told that it's wrong to do this and it's wrong to do that. Farmers are being told that they cannot uh continue to uh pursue the kind of agrarian practices that are that they've been doing for generations. A lot of them who have invested a lot of money in particular producing food are not told that this is not environmentally friendly. So for them, this is uh this represents not just simply a new rule, a new regulation, it means their way of life is being destroyed uh fairly systematically. So you have these kinds of top-down environmental projects, but you also have similar projects in the domain of uh human relations. So uh it's interesting that gender politics or gender ideology is being institutionalized throughout Europe. Nobody asked for it. Nobody uh demanded it. There wasn't a referendum that said you want to change the language that we use, that we want to change the way we behave. But these are things that are just simply imposed, or just appear one morning. One morning you go into your office and you realize there's just all these new statutory rules and processes that you gotta adhere to. So these are really quite important because uh they really affect not just simply the matter of economic or or those kinds of issues, they also very much affect um people's cultural values and and the way they look at the world.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

What do you make of the um suggestion uh when it when it comes about that the culture wars are uh a right-wing confection?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Well, this is uh this is very interesting because um there is this kind of story that's being fun that indicates that you know a small number of people like myself have one woken up one morning and created this new script that bears no relationship to reality. Whereas they have in fact been pursuing a culture work. Culture war actually means that you call into question the prevailing uh cultural practices, the traditions, the rituals, the values that have been around for a very, very long time. And if you if you come around and, for example, say that you can no longer use a word like female because it excludes a lot of people who um regard themselves as women, even though they're not biologically women, then what you're saying is that a word that's been around literally since the middle, early Middle Ages, hundreds of years, uh, is now seen as no longer either relevant or you can no longer use it. Now that's a culture war, because what you're doing is you're calling into question people's vocabulary, the language, and there's nothing more uh intrinsic to a culture than the words that we're using. And I, you know, if you go through it systematically, you'll find that uh so many of our uh so many of our practices that we could take for granted for generations, for thousands of years, now all of a sudden are being swept aside on the grounds that they're not inclusive, that they are not uh they don't meet the right kind of equity demands, that somehow they're racist or xenophobic or homophobic. I mean, there's all these various labels they use to sweep away uh our culture.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

And then they got the goal to say that there isn't a culture war, uh, you know, sort of yeah, uh and I that that brings us uh I suppose back to the point uh that you've raised so um consistently uh in the in uh recent years about that conflict in values between European Union's leaders and and Hungary is often Hungary is held out as uh being some uh backward um place that needs to get with the program that it is um illegitimately um setting itself up as a Christian nation, and people bridle against the idea when Auburn brings it up that we're it's a Christian nation. And um uh it's it's interesting how you see the Central European nations, um, Hungary and the other Visigrad countries, how they're characterized in the Western media. Uh to your mind, Frank, what's true? Uh what what are the red herrings and and what do you think the motivation is behind those characterizations?

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Well, I think there's first of all uh a powerful colonial impulse. I mean, they regard Hungarians and other East Europeans as if they just come at come come down from the trees as these kind of savage natives who haven't got the sophistication and the awareness uh that they here in Britain or elsewhere possess. So you've got that kind of colonial arrogance that you assume that you know better than than East Europeans what is in their best interest. But then secondly, I think they find it incomprehensible that uh uh a Hungarian government, for example, still takes seriously values and practices which they believe are so outdated as to as to be ridiculous. And not only outdated, but they are dangerous as well. So, for example, they look down upon the idea of national sovereignty. The fact that you take your uh national identity seriously, they think that's very backward and potentially uh xenophobic. They don't understand that you can love your nations without hating other nations. There's no logical relationship between uh national consciousness, patriotism on the one hand, and xenophobia on the other hand. So they think that national sovereignty is is is uh is wrong. They they they believe that if you have uh a religious conviction, if you uh adhere to a certain Judeo-Christian outlook, that that somehow uh means that you're very backward and mystified and there's something really wrong with that because again, from their point of view, that means that you're not uh inclusive in in the right kind of way. So they don't really understand why you'd still want to uh sort of uh uh follow your conscience in relation to religious matters. They they basically find it bizarre that for you the family is still seen as a very important, sacred, foundational unit in the way that our our world works. From their point of view, from a cosmopolitan point of view, what matters are children, you know. So you you can think about what what happens to a child, what matters are a woman, what happens to uh a woman in a in a relationship, and they disaggregate the family into different kinds of problems. So violence against children or against women, child, they even have expressions like child poverty. As if somehow you have poor children but rich parents, you know, sort of as instead of talking about the family as having economic problems, you kind of disaggregate, always disaggregate the family as if as if those relationships, those bonds and ties are inherently dangerous. So when you when you add up all these uh differences in the different way you're looking at it, you're you basically have uh a very uh a very strong moral contrast between the between the two societies, between an East European society and the outlook of the of the uh cultural and political establishment whose views are much more kind of cosmopolitan and much much much much much much different.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah, that that is interesting. And I it I even think about my own um political awareness growing somewhat um uh post post-Brexit, as it were. And I remember in um well, this was pre-Brexit, but in 2015 when the the migrant crisis was um really starting to get into full flow, and Hungary was being criticized heavily in the media for erecting a border wall uh uh with Serbia, uh, and was was being called uh all of those things that you uh you just referenced, xenophobic and racist for trying to keep out um migrants. And I remember watching a BBC interview. Um, and at the time, because I was um I suppose um inculcated with the standard British liberal media institution outlook, um I watched the interview and wondered um why the pr uh the the foreign minister couldn't couldn't respond to these questions, which looking, watching it again, they were they were hectoring. You know, it was the you know, what's wrong with you? Why don't you accept all of these asylum seekers? And I think there was something like 43,000 that were trying to get it through to Hungary, and uh the response was look, we'll accept asylum seekers, we're gonna process them legally, we're removing emotion out of it, let's deal with the facts. We're a nation of uh small memes, and we want to make sure that we can absorb who we can and maintain our identity. And I remember the the interviewer really bridling at that suggestion about maintaining an identity as though there was something um dark about it. And I suppose that is the difference between the Western European countries and the Central European countries. It's I don't know if you buy into that Samuel Huntington worldview, that civilizational worldview, but it's it seems that Hungarians and the surrounding countries really get it. And I think partly it's because of their history. They know what it's like to be overrun by alien ways of life, as in you know, the communist regimes, the Nazi regimes, and not be allowed to live in accordance with their culture and their tradition. And um and it seems we we've we've forgotten that, or at least we in the we in the western part of Europe don't don't understand that.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

And so uh we sit and throw stones at them instead.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yeah, I mean, I I think what you've got is a is a is a world where uh one one part of it believes that the foundational value of society is diversity, that somehow diversity is inherently a positive ideal. Whereas in fact, diversity is not really an ideal or a value, but it merely describes uh what is in front of our eyes and and and looks at the fact that there are many different types of people in front of us. But there is no virtue, there's no inherent virtue about a society that is diverse, any more than there's any inherent virtue in a society that is its opposite, which is homogeneous. So when you when you kind of take concepts like homogeneity and heterogeneity, there's nothing inherently valuable. One isn't better than the other. It very much depends upon the context and what else is really taking place there. But I think that what uh what Hungary is really trying to do here was not only protect its border before it's too late, and I think Britain is now finding out that you do get to a point where it is too late. You just cannot stop the constant flow of mass migration. It was also basically saying that look, you know, we are a small country, we have rarely been independent, we've always been occupied by external nations from the Germans to Russians to Austrians, you know, so you know, to for to the Turks. So we would like to have a bit of independence where we decide for ourselves uh what our destiny is, we control our borders, we decide who comes in and out, because we believe that that's the only way in which we can have a secure democratic society. And that to me makes perfect sense. And it doesn't make sense for those people, like those BBC interviewers, who somehow believe that there is something inherently wrong with the aspirations to build uh uh essentially a fairly homogeneous society, like like Hungary is trying to do, because it's not diverse enough uh from their point of view. Um, which I think that says more about the people who try to turn diversity into moral value, whereas in fact there's nothing inherently moral about it. It's got no moral uh depth or or any kind of organic link to a system of ideals. It's merely something that has been invented in the last 30 or 40 years and turned into this uh uh almost like this kind of what is a mimic of a value rather than anything else. So when you talk to these people, uh they don't talk about courage, they don't talk about uh uh charity, they don't talk about uh the need for freedom or tolerance, those kinds of values. It's always inclusion and diversity. You know, sort of somehow they've kind of snuck in and become the the basic principles which they're trying to inflict upon the rest of us.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Hungary uh and Victor Auburn has said this as well, um, is is characterized and characterizes itself as an illiberal democracy. And when they do that, and when Auburn does that, everyone jumps on it and goes, see, we told you they're they're beyond the pale. Um I I think in in the book Um Populism and the European Culture Wars, um, you make this point that in a liberal democracy it is, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the European Union in the in the kind of um more uh high-profile uh powerful countries like Germany and France and the European Union itself is not also illiberal. Um do you agree with that? And in what way, if so, what ways do you think that those who are plastered liberal are illiberal in essence?

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Yeah, I mean I I think uh Germany is a very good example uh of a country that is not only uh illiberal, but also not very democratic. In other words, it it'll it's it basically subordinates democracy to other kind of other kind of values. And by ill by liberal, what I mean is that, for example, in in Germany and elsewhere, you know, they're they're talking about banning a political party, the AFD. You don't have to support them, but you know, but when you think about how a significant section of the electorate votes for them, the idea that they even raise the possibility of uh banning them is a very clear symptom of an illiberal outlook. The very fact that they've uh uh they've taken the decision uh that the police and the secret services have got the right to keep an eye on them, monitor them on the ground that they they don't like their kind of politics is also a sign of illiberalism. Then you have uh a growing uh sort of number of uh arguments about how this and that is hate speech, and therefore that needs to be punished uh by by the law, and therefore censorship and uh incursion on free speech are quite quite systematic. I mean, Germany is far worse uh than many, many other European countries when it comes to the freedom of expression. And and those things to me, you know, the lack of tolerance, the lack of respect for free speech and for freedom are very much a symptom of a society who cannot really take uh the foundational ideals of liberalism seriously.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

It does seem to be uh a common a common um trend at the moment, these uh whether it's hate speech laws. And the the means in which to uphold them are spreading. But we could take Ireland as one example in response to the public um rioting that took place after the um Irish citizen, but I think it was Algerian-born uh man, had uh been on a uh a stabbing spree in in Dublin. And um in response, Leo Faradkar uh rolled out uh uh a rather hastily drafted um uh hate speech law which uh gave police the um ability to uh demand your passwords for social media uh if you were reported for uh hate speech and should you refuse to give them, then you would end up being locked up. And um and and recently Poland, Donald Tusk uh be becoming uh becoming the leader of the country once more. And uh I I I saw on social media that there seems to be somewhat of a a purge going on in the in the media, that people being rounded up out of uh broadcasting organizations and and um and um and made sure that they can't speak because they are politically on the other side of the aisle. Um this this strikes me as um totally counter to the idea that uh they're still referred to as liberal elites when they countenance this kind of um behavior, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Yeah, I mean I I often make the point that when uh my conservative colleagues uh describe their opponents as the liberal elites, but strictly speaking, they're that's not accurate. Because there is nothing liberal about these elites. Uh and I mean it it's a caricature of liberalism, what they kind of support, because uh, you know, there are some very important and honorable liberal values that uh you know one needs to take seriously and take with us, you know, values that we're we're fought for over centuries. You know, I mean everything from the freedom of conscience all the way to the freedom of expression, all the way to tolerance, all the way through uh recognizing the uh importance of moral autonomy, you know, the the rights of distinction between the private and the public sphere, and the importance of of uh respecting people's private lives. I mean these are really really, really quite important, and uh it seems to me that that's that's something that's under attack by so-called liberals themselves.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

What do you think Western political and business leaders can can learn from um Visigrad countries' modes of government and and their worldview uh if if they were open to it?

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Well, I'm not a believer in uh teaching lessons from another nation, uh because I think that every nation uh has gotta find their own way but and and and find their own enlightenment. But it seems to me that the thing that we can learn from East Europe uh is that many of the what I would call old school ideals that have been integral to you know the European the European uh society and culture are really important to pr preserve instead of discarding the way that it's be it is the case today. And what I would argue is that uh instead of bringing in all what I call California values from the United States, which are almost like you kind of make them up as you go along and uh are often uh almost like kind of artificially created, um you gotta probably uh have no moral depth to them. They don't really mo motivate people. It's important that we go back to basics in the sense of um being clear about where we've come from in order to know where we're going. Because unless we have a clarity about where we're going, what the direction of travel is, you're gonna live in this ever-present and be paralyzed from being able to deal with the challenges of our time.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

That's a refreshing answer. This uh you're showing that you're a true true believer, I suppose, in um not just accepting cosmopolitanism, uh, even if there might be some valuable lessons to be learned over in this other country, is you can't just transplant it into another place and expect it to work exactly the same way. I I think that um abstraction is probably what's gotten um most uh put governments into a bit of a bit of a bit of a pickle, should we say, in the last uh 20, 30 years? If I may, I'll ask you a biographical question, because you're born in Hungary, raised in Canada, and then you've taught in the UK for a long time. When when was it? Can you spot when things started to change? And do you know what those drivers were? Or was it was it ever thus? Was it just that you noticed there was a growing antagonism between those who ruled and uh those who were being ruled, and uh a value conflict um growing between them? Or did you did you notice that start to um show in certain places at certain times and what the drivers were?

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Well, the thing is you have to remember that throughout most of the post-war era, the major conflicts were ideological rather than cultural. You know, there would be about left and right conflicts, there would be a word between communism and capitalism or the Soviet Union and America. And they would be often very much focused, for example, in Britain, on economics and you know, sort of taxation and how you distribute resources. But what happened was that uh in the late 70s, we had the exhaustion of all the ideologies that uh one associates with modernity, from communism to socialism to liberalism to conservatism. And it's at that point that you had a situation where uh arguments and conflicts became focused on values. It first began with the rise of environmentalism, where green values began to challenge the way that production uh was sustained, and that was essentially a cultural uh argument. In fact, they used to call that the cultural turn in the late 70s, early 1980s. And then gradually, as the as time went along, you found that increasingly with the rise of identity politics, which was the main medium for introducing the culture wars, uh you had a very different landscape, where a very different political landscape where gradually, in a sense, uh ideological and economic uh sort of issues and themes became marginalized, and cultural ones began to gain uh sort of uh a far greater degree of importance. And I kind of picked up on this first in the early 1980s when I noticed that uh uh at that time there's a lot of arguments about the dangers of the family and family life, and we used to have all these uh what I would used to call moral crusades against the family by arguing that it's a place where the abuse of children is normalized. And you know, especially because I'm I was very fortunate and blessed with a really good family where I grew up in, and where my mother and my father were extremely supportive and we were all very, very close. I found that these new versions of what a family is like is a as a place where you know violence occurs, and they used that expression, the dark side of the family, as if some had, you know, there's a dark side to the family. Uh that's really when I began to become sensitive to the fact that uh many of the things that you could take for granted as essentially part of our world, the way we live, were not beginning to get challenged. And that was a very early stage because what happened was that decade by decade since then, uh the stakes have been raised, you know, new new targets have been cited by them, you know, new language, uh, new words uh have been invented and created, and and the growing number of our traditional vocabulary has been uh turned into uh a pathology that you cannot uh sort of use anymore.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

It's fascinating just how I suppose viciously the family has been attacked in the popular culture uh when there seems to be reams of um evidence uh that is starting to uh come to the fore now that suggests that that's having some seriously deleterious effects on children and now our young adults because it that's the the culture they were brought up in. Now, I know there's a book right now doing the rounds in America called The Two Parent Privilege. Um there's a there's uh there's plenty of data to suggest that, particularly boys, but all children that grow up in a split home have much worse life outcomes. And uh uh I think Jonathan Haidt has been doing quite a lot of work um that sees the link between the generation that's been brought up in uh institutional childcare um and safetyism um and those that came before which were brought up in a stable household like the one you were describing.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Yeah, I mean I don't agree with Jonathan on that particular point. I don't think that uh childcare is a problem. There's nothing inherently bad. I think it's a it's it's a very useful resource that helps parents out. The reason why you have safetyism is because the whole of uh child rearing culture has changed quite fundamentally. It's become much more risk-averse. And that risk aversion uh is something that is not rooted within the family, but within our society itself. And it just so happens that that uh you know that that what I call the therapeutic turn within you know Western culture, where you increasingly medicalize what I see as existential problems, uh, begins to uh get stronger and stronger and stronger. And within the family that takes the form of this uh uh obsession with uh the necessity to um protect children from the um challenges of life. So what you have in in the whole domain of parenting is a situation where every single experience that children have can have comes with a health warning. And that's got nothing to do, I think Jonathan misses that a little bit. It's got nothing to do with with kind of uh childcare, because I think childcare, if it's done properly, uh can uh can can make uh the work of families much easier and and and the two uh two can forge a partnership that benefits children. Because on the one hand, you know, you can have children having close uh relationships with their mothers and fathers. It's quite important for their existential security, whilst at the same time within a childcare environment, they can become they can learn to engage with their peers, they can learn how to develop the kind of skills they need in the public world, which which uh the sooner they learn the better.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Well, we've spoken uh since the beginning about uh the um elite classes, ruling classes uh ideas, values that are in conflict with people's interests more broadly. Um what chances do you think there are of a of a reformation of sorts within within our leaders uh to align more broadly with the people's interests?

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Uh none.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Uh I don't think that I don't think there's any possibility that our existing uh cultural, the exit, you know, the political, cultural oligarchy can somehow come to Jesus, you know, or or can somehow uh see the light because they're so deeply steeped in their particular point of view, they're so arrogant uh that uh they are right and everybody else is wrong, and they've invested so much of their uh emotional and uh psychic capital in a kind of uh in the kind of worldview that prevails today, uh that even when they see very, very clearly in front of their eyes, you know, what is really happening, you know, no matter how visual and no matter how clear it is, you know, they don't see it and they wouldn't see it. And it really was brought home to me just how um deluded they have become, how they live in a world of their own, how they see things in accordance with their own personal space. It is the way they reacted to the atrocities in October 7th in in Israel, you know, where you don't is you know, anybody, any human being, normal human being, uh when they see the the rapes and the killing of people and the abduction of children and all these things happening on an industrial scale would be horrified by it and would would find this is um was almost a visceral emotional reaction, uh, which basically would tell them that this is as bad as it gets. Whereas I know so many people, you know, in the political class and in the uh media and elsewhere who basically didn't see that. You know, didn't you know, or or if they did see something, they interpreted it in an entirely different kind of way. And yet yet, particularly in academia and in the uh cultural institutions, uh this no-compute where they basically weren't particularly bothered that much about what was really happening. Um, in fact, some of them actually thought this was a great result. And so when you see something uh that is so horrific and you react to it in a way that is almost the opposite to the way that we would react to it, uh then you know that there is a massive, you know, massive psychic distance here, which is not going to be overcome anytime soon.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah, well, that's it's a shame. I I suppose um when you read post-liberals like Patrick Danin, who make the point that because of this big value divide, because of the growing conflict between the the few and the many, as it were, um, is that in the end it'll come to a head. It's those who lead will either have to be reformed or they'll have to be replaced. So so do you do you think that um because of the the blind list, the the ideological biases um uh currently being exhibited by our leaders that um because they're not going to reform, that eventually we'll just keep on seeing more of what we're seeing now on the the the eve of 2024 of a of a of a pushback by the people by whatever means they they can. Do you think it'll that's the only way that there might be an alignment with people's interests is you know a full replacement of the elite, hopefully, in peaceful ways?

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Yeah, I I I mean look, if we basically fold our hands, our arms, and allow this development to continue, then it will get worse and worse, right? Because if you look at uh the dynamic at the moment, you have a situation where the culture war finds new targets and finds new ways of essentially uh undermining what is left of the world that we cannot come from. So yesterday they will make a big issue about the fact that the idea that women and men are binary and are different, that that's somehow wrong. Now tomorrow they're going to make a big deal about the fact that it's wrong to make a moral distinction about between humans and animals. And that we're gonna have a you know a huge discussion on that because that's got incredible implications. We're already moving in that direction. It will change so much of the way we live because human civilization was not was founded, one of the foundations of human civilization was in the special moral characteristics of humanity and the distinction between humans and animals. So that will get worse. So the only thing that uh we can rely on is democracy. I think democracy is the only weapon we have because democracy allows majority opinion to uh find some kind of an expression. It's not always easy because there's always attempts to curb uh the majority sentiments. But democracy is really quite important, especially in those circumstances where you can have a referendum. I think if you look at the referendum in Australia, that was really very encouraging because there you had the entire establishment arguing that uh sort of this silly idea of giving indigenous, uh so-called indigenous communities, this kind of uh grotesquely uh privileged position in in and in terms of uh bypassing democratic decision making uh was rejected by the population. You know, nobody expected it. They were so confident that their plans would go through, but it was rejected because it was uh it was possible, just like even during Brexit, for the majority to give, you know, find their voice. So democracy is the only weapon that we have, and we have to rely on our own resources. Now that's not going to happen soon, because we lack the uh clarity, the uh intellectual uh clout. We need to develop our own alternative intellectual elites, you know, ones that can really uh look, come up with the good ideas, persuade, uh sort of influence the media, um, project uh an all a narrative that kind of that is uh motivational and inspiring that can challenge the prevailing one. But that's the way that's gonna come about. And uh we're gonna play our roles in relation to that. And I'm I'm reasonably optimistic, you know, that there is uh a growing mood within European societies where more and more people are trying to find their voice. And uh you and I and others have got to do what we can to help people find that voice. Uh, because once they do that, then our power will increase uh considerably.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Yeah, and there is obviously a hope that we might be able to get to a point where we've got a more counterbalanced position of views and actually get back to that point where you could all sit around and disagree with each other instead of um effectively deleting people out of your uh phone contact list because they don't agree with you. Sometimes I wonder whether the only, I say the only problem with having to rely on democracy is now now is not democracy itself, but because of this information environment that we've set up. Um and as you can see, there's a rising uh there are rising concerns about misinformation and disinformation are the two terms of the day. And um it seems that we are living in a Tower of Barbel moment, which is why those stories are timeless where we're all speaking different languages and everyone dismisses the legitimacy of the other ones. And so it'll be interesting to see how all of that develops. You know, if you do have a rising intellectual elite on the side that offers an alternative to the one that currently holds primacy, is how how are they going to be accepted as people who are telling some version of the truth? And um, and and how does that um come to pass without there being um a similar amount of excesses being committed by the other side? Um they're the things that pop to my mind. Um what what what what what do you think about um uh what should we say, uh uh the uh uh a a more harmonious set of relations between um the populations of Europe and and the West more broadly?

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Well, I I think first of all, I I don't really accept the idea that we have this unique misinformation problem, that we have this fake news problem. Uh I mean the World Economic Forum has just uh indicated that they think that's one of the bigger biggest risks facing the world. And I think that when they say that they're worried about fake news or misinformation, what they are really saying is that they're worried about democracy and the way that democracy works, because in their eyes, uh what they are you know, if people vote uh uh in a way that is uh uh uh opposing to their standpoint, what in a way that challenges their position, the only explanation they can possibly put forward isn't that democracy is working, but that people have been influenced by, you know, lies and fake news and AI and all these other things. And that argument has been used ever since democracy was first invented in ancient Greece, where they used to say that the sophists in Greece were misleading people and we need to worry about that. Now obviously there are lies and people mislead, try to mislead you and me. But in the end, you know, sort of one of the beauties of democracy is that through debate and clarification and argument, you know, we can create a world where you know people can learn and and and find out for themselves what they see to be right and what they see to be wrong. So that for me, we have to fight this this kind of uh what I think is a is a misinterpretation of the political landscape because if we accept that uh you know the problem is the social media or the problem is fake news, then what we're doing is what we're saying is we do not trust people to know for themselves what is right and what is wrong. We basically think that our citizens are too stupid to kind of basically work out you know what is what what is really important for them. So I think we have to reject that. And uh it seems to me that if you are concerned, if you are really genuinely concerned about uh you know sort of having a more civilized political uh culture then we have to set the example I think if you know if uh one of the ways in which we set the example is by being uh open to argue amongst ourselves. So if you know even though you and I might be on the same side, that doesn't mean to say that we agree with every single thing under the sun and arguing and discussing and engaging in uh in this process of of uh a voyage of discovery uh it is very compelling. If people can see that uh the uh the culture of debate isn't just uh something that allows people with loud voices you know to have their say but actually leads to uh progress and and leads to a a greater understanding of the problems that faces us, then by setting an example and and creating forums uh where debate is taking place can uh lead to a more grown-up uh orientation towards public life. At the moment we're very childish, particular well particularly the other side is very in infantile in the way they deal with arguments and and the way they kind of dismiss it and find words to to criminalize it almost. So it's really up to us to set the standards.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

We not only have to develop the right kind of arguments and and challenge their one-sided view of the world we also have to through our example create uh uh a kind of situation where people know that there's a different kind of way that you operate as a political being that being a citizen has responsibilities and one of the responsibilities is is that you don't just simply shout yell and talk but you also learn to listen well I hope that is inspiring it definitely uh it's good to hear someone who's so prominent within uh intellectual debate public debate feel like there is grounds for optimism that we might see a counterbalance a more balanced way of doing things I suppose as you highlighted there are uh impediments to be able to do do that and um I know John Gray when he did an interview for unheard had spoken about um as many do now that liberalism is is is over uh there are very few spaces to be able to have those kinds of reasoned uh conversations and disagreements with one another um but he was applauding unheard which I know uh I think your son works for them um for creating that space uh to be able to continue to do that and that that's all we can do is to continue to create these spaces have these conversations uh to try to to bring something else into being it slightly off piece I think it probably is um and we won't have time to go through it but it does seem to be pretty unchallengeable that um whatever it was that was referring to as liberalism might well have run the end of its course given the way we see people dealing with others uh now in society um what what do you think are some of the um potential pathways from here you know are are there some optimistic ones are there some concerning ones what does that what does a post-liberal world look like and do you welcome it yeah well I don't know I don't like post-words you know any kind of post-word you know whether it's uh post-history or you know post-liberal or you know um or post-uh capitalist I I I think that they uh foreclose uh the whole historical process and and I I think that they create this artificial almost like before and after kind of uh temporal distinction I I I I think that uh we're now at a a point in our time where we have to think about some very basic questions like what does it mean to be a human?

SPEAKER_02 49:33

You know we have to go back to some of the uh philosophical issues that have been uh puzzling people for centuries and we have to rethink them in what that means in the 21st century kind of context. And in the course of doing that, what we need is not somehow a rehashing of an old ideology or or basically a a new version of what was tried beforehand, nor should we just simply reject the lessons of the past because they're very important lessons that could be learned and many of the political cultural resources that have been uh created over the centuries are are still really very important for us. I I still find it really good to go back to Aristotle you know I find it really nice that there are all these uh uh intellectual heroes of mine who written what they did and I I really try to plunder them and and appropriate their ideas for myself and and and use it and teach it and and discuss it. So I think we have to we have to be uh a little bit humble in in in that respect. But I think that the uh the really important thing for me is not so much what you know kind of finding a political movement through which this is carried out, although I have my own ideas, which is the you know the the importance I attach to populism. I think the really important thing is we have to win the younger generations because we've lost several generations in the culture war who've been influenced by wrong ideas or the ideas that are going to uh disorient them as they grow up. We need to be able to uh somehow uh engage with their idealism because their their idealism is is very crucial. It's got the energy and the power to have a positive impact in the world that we kind of live in. And I think we should somehow address that those generations and try to somehow influence them so that they they become much more independent minded, much more independent thinking than is the case at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

And that's the to me that's the best thing that we can do to create the conditions where we can uh uh realize the positive potential that exists within society because there are you know there is always potential in our world and and we should never be pessimistic and imagine that everything is hopeless but in order to be able to uh develop a politics of hope we need to create a constituency a substantial constituency for that which will invariably and almost always uh is based upon the younger generations agreed uh Kathleen Stock wrote an an article and unheard recently saying that the students kids aren't the problem they're the solution so whilst we are it's well documented that um people have spoken about there are nine uh left wing for whatever whatever uh value that term has anymore uh academics to one um more conservatively minded academic uh and so it's uh it it's bathing um uh students in these um these ideals which we've been talking about today um she is basically saying right yep that's that's an issue but what we need to be doing is figuring out how to get a more balanced way of seeing things to them now I dare say you changing universities over time and somehow um incentivizing for getting a more balanced set of uh academics within an institution I mean you work in the the industry you will be able to talk much better to it it's probably not the only way that we we want to approach it so um as some of the the methods you're talking about is ensuring that you have people making the most of new media or um what are what are the ways in which that the outreach can happen that you can influence the the younger generation um without relying necessarily on um the educational institutions?

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Well I I think that the uh the only way the most effective way of moving forward is first of all by developing an independent media because I think that an independent media can reach people at all levels of society and all ages and at the moment the the media is really uh influenced by our our our political opponents who uh are are extremely uh influential because of you know if if if if you run Netflix if you run the movie industry and you know BBC IS other institutions who all speak to the same script and that's real power. Real real power. Now we haven't got very much or anything like that at the moment but given the fact that the media uh is uh it is something that is much easier and much more cheaper to develop than would have been the case in the past I remain quite optimistic about it and I'm really glad that in at least in England in Britain we have you know spiked uh we have GB News we have one heard which are fairly modest at the moment but I think that they provide a a certain pole of attraction so we have to develop our media we have to develop uh our own uh institutions that can provide an intellectual alternative and they don't have to be universities or schools although I'm all for you know new schools independent schools uh that are are being run by people who are committed to a a more uh rigorous high standard approach towards education I mean all these things uh are have been tried here and there but never systematically and uh we have to as at some point address higher education because higher education is really quite important. It's in many ways too in far too important because um you know there's no need for so many people to participate in it because it changes higher education that turns into a factory and industry rather than a the academy. But there's no reason why we cannot start new academies and find some kind of practical ways of of making that happen. So a lot depends on uh institutional innovation on our part and seizing opportunities where they're possible and that's how it would see us going forward.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Thanks Frank well I don't want to keep you too much longer because you've already been very generous with your time but to run a thought experiment um let's just say those uh those currently leading the charge that we've been talking about today um were to see the blinkers drop off and uh they were more open to seeing things differently what would you tell those of influence to pay attention to in their governance of society?

SPEAKER_02 56:26

I think the the most important thing I would tell them is to stop outsourcing decision making to non-elected bodies. Stop relying on the courts, upon non-governmental organizations, on international organizations, but but really rely upon parliamentary democracy a little bit more and engage you know engage democratic decision making with the people because I think the key thing for us is to ensure that the people that inhabit our society work as citizens. They're real citizens who are taking responsibility for the future of our nation but for them to be citizens they have to be treated like citizens rather as election father or rather as people that you basically regard with contempt and try to reform them or or change their minds or raise their awareness. So yeah I think that being democratic in the true sense of the word would be the number one demand that I would place on them.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

Frank it's been an absolute delight to be able to speak to you today. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_02 57:33

So people listening watching can find you um what where where is it that you publish your stuff I publish a lot of my stuff on my stuff tag which is called Roots and Wings with Frank Ferrelli so you can check that out I wish I had more time to devote to it but I'm too busy with my work but it's mainly there I I write for Spikes I I write for other newspapers as well. I got a book coming out uh this year which I'm very which I think is really uh important for us it's called The War Against the Past why the West must regain control over its history and that kind of uh brings together many of the issues that we're discussing here explains the the significance of the importance of gaining control of over our past because unless we do that we lose uh the ability uh to uh actually challenge make it uh deal with the challenge of the future well I will be pre-ordering that when the the link comes out uh th thanks again Frank I really appreciate I hope we get to speak again all right take care John all the best thank you for joining me in thinking class today to keep up to date with all that I am doing please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at ThinkingClass and follow me on X at thinking classes.

SPEAKER_01 58:56

Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters. Here I seek to explore the ideas, values and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond. Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclaspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you. I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey