Episode 450, The Andrew Parker Show - Truth Isn’t Relative: Melanie Phillips on October 7, Multiculturalism, and the War on Reality

Renowned British journalist and author Melanie Phillips joins Andrew Parker for a wide-ranging, fearless conversation about the West’s crisis of truth, the rise of ideological coercion, and why Judeo-Christian foundations still matter in a secular age.

They begin with Phillips’ experience being “canceled before cancel culture,” her break with legacy media orthodoxy, and why the loss of confidence in objective truth has left institutions unable to distinguish reality from propaganda. From the David Irving vs. Deborah Lipstadt trial to today’s revisionism on Israel and antisemitism, Phillips argues we are living through a full-scale battle over truth—now accelerated by technology and cultural intimidation.

The conversation turns to October 7, 2023, the immediate global reaction, and what it reveals about modern moral inversion. Phillips explainseaks about the progressive alliance with the Palestinian Arab narrative, the psychology behind tearing down hostage posters, and why ideology becomes a sealed belief system where evidence no longer matters.

Finally, Andrew and Melanie tackle multiculturalism, national identity, and whether Europe can still be saved. Phillips explains why multiculturalism is not simply tolerance, but a doctrine that can dissolve the shared foundations of a democratic society—and why the West may soon face the difficult paradox of taking “illiberal measures” to preserve a liberal order.

Melanie Phillips is the author of The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It.

Transcript

Episode 450, The Andrew Parker Show - Truth Isn’t Relative: Melanie Phillips on October 7, Multiculturalism, and the War on Reality

Andrew Parker (00:02)
Welcome to another episode of the Andrew Parker Show. Thank you once again for joining us. As you know, we talk politics, Israel, and the law. Each and every episode, geez, going on nine years now. And it just seems that, you know, you think after time, topics and issues and interests might wane.

Well, no, that is not the case. We might wish and hope that for the topics we're discussing, they might wane, but no, not at all. I am, geez, I'm just thrilled and very excited about the opportunity that comes with this show, and that is...

to interview Melanie Phillips, someone who I have followed for a number of decades, who comes from ⁓ liberal philosophy and thought, no doubt, ⁓ in years gone by, and still applies those liberal philosophies today, but with the labels that are put upon people, some might.

consider her a conservative. I don't know where it comes from, but I think that that is probably the case. She's a prominent British journalist, an author, a public commentator, really extraordinary. She speaks the truth. She gets it. She understands it. And many of you may not have even heard of her. You should have, certainly. She has written

Melanie Phillips (01:29)
Ha ha ha.

Andrew Parker (01:57)
⁓ and spends most of her time over the pond there in Great Britain and boy do they have a lot of work to do to get out of the hole that they have dug themselves there ⁓ and in Europe at large and Melanie Phillips follows that she tracks it she's been an author of Well more than 20 books about 25, I think at least and ⁓

London a Stan was one that Really is remarkable how Britain is creating a terror state from within Britain back in 2006 think about that and Where we are sitting today also the world turned upside down written in 2010 about the global battle over God truth

in power, such a critical, critical topic, and most recently, the builder's stone, how Jews and Christians built the West and why only they can save it. And Lord knows we need some work to save it. So, we welcome to the Andrew Parker show today. And again, I am truly honored to have Melanie Phillips.

Melanie Phillips (03:24)
Hello Andrew, it's a great privilege and pleasure to be on your show. Thank you for having me.

Andrew Parker (03:30)
So Melanie, I've tracked ⁓ recently, much more recently, the career of Barry Weiss. And I found her writing for many years early on ⁓ to be interesting. I disagreed with her on a number of various policy things as sidelights. ⁓

But she left the New York Times, as you're well aware, authoring a public letter of resignation. And I wanted to ask you, because it appears to me that you left The Guardian decades ago ⁓ under, you know, different certainly, but somewhat similar circumstances. And I wanted you to maybe recount a little bit of your career in that respect.

Melanie Phillips (04:30)
Yes, are certain similarities and certain differences. I mean, I worked for the best part of 20 years for Guardian newspapers, most of it for the Guardian. And then when the Guardian bought The Observer, a Sunday newspaper, I worked for that for two or three years. And ⁓ I was sort of I was a senior ⁓ Guardian journalist. I was an editorial writer. I was a news editor and then an op-ed columnist.

And at a fairly early stage, about three years into my tenure at the Guardian, I decided that I realized that the people that I had thought were marching with me behind the same liberal banners ⁓ of ⁓ opposition to abuses of power wherever they were, standing up for the oppressed ⁓ and minorities, standing against ⁓

bigotry of all kinds, standing for truth against lies, all those good things which I remain attached to, they remain my lodestar. But what happened was in the early 1980s, I came to believe that the people that I thought were marching alongside me, my Guardian colleagues and beyond them, people on what was called then the liberal left, I realized that they were on the other side and they stood in fact for everything.

that they purported to be against. And with that realization, I then started writing in a way which ⁓ caused them to believe that I was first of all a conservative and then right wing and then very right wing and then far right and then hard right. And then they discovered that I was a Zionist Jew. At that stage, I had never been to Israel, never wanted to go to Israel. That's another story.

And then they decided I was a far-right Likudnik Zionist Jew, and then they decided I was insane. And at that point, they kind of ran out of insults, and I was still writing. And it took me a very long time to separate from them, because it's a bit like you wake up one day and your family has been abusing you. You realize your family has been abusing you, and you, you know, it's very hard to accept that, because you think that can't be true. All these years, I have not realized that. That can't be so.

there must be something wrong with me. And eventually you come to realize it, you come to realize that it is undeniably so. And then you realize you can't live with them anymore and you have to leave. But it took me a very long time to do that. Meanwhile, I was multiply canceled long before the word cancel became part of our architecture of ⁓ social coercion. I was a domestic writer. I wasn't even writing about Israel or Jews particularly. was

Andrew Parker (07:10)
Yes.

Melanie Phillips (07:20)
writing about things like education and family breakdown, and then the nation, how the West had turned against the very idea of the nation, and then multiculturalism, and then Islam and Islamization. And issue by issue, I was denounced and pilloried and vilified and cast out from Eden. And, you know, my experience then, which was

I'm talking about the 80s and 90s really. That has been replicated since then in more recent years. And as you say, Barry Weiss came up against it or part of that at the New York Times. I mean, as I recall, she found that people who bucked in some way or challenged in some way the ideological dogma of the left, she couldn't get them published in the New York Times. And she came to believe

that a very significant part of that was sheer antisemitism. So there are certain similarities between the two of us, but I must say, you know, she went on to make a quite spectacular success of having ⁓ left the New York Times in the way that she did. So all hats, you know, hats off to her.

Andrew Parker (08:40)
Yes, indeed. And well, hats off to you for being canceled before canceled was canceled. And I was wondering who the pioneer of being canceled was. Here we have Melody Phillips. Sure enough, sure enough. No question. You know, I was intrigued by the way in which you come to the subjects

Melanie Phillips (08:49)
Yeah

It's me! ⁓

Andrew Parker (09:10)
which you've talked about here today, that you write about from a, yes, a Jewish background, but much more so an understanding of critical Christian principles and values and the importance of Christian values in a global world.

And one in which somehow we got to figure out how to all get along

Melanie Phillips (09:46)
Yes, I mean, it's a secular world, certainly where I'm coming from in Britain, where I was born and bred. It's a post-religious world. think it's true to say that Britain sort of led the way away from ⁓ organized religion, Christianity into a secular universe. And I realized very early on that in attacking

⁓ or not attacking, but denying its Christian roots, the West was actually sawing off the branch on which it sat. That because it was a secular world, and I feel this really so strongly all the time now, they really just don't understand.

religion at all. see the world entirely through the prism of Western secular thinking. As a result, they really don't understand the rest of the world that doesn't match to the same tune. But they also didn't understand the ⁓ basis on which the West and its greatness had been established. ⁓ You know, it was established on the framework, the kind of infrastructure of Christianity and

They've gone to great lengths to deny that, to say that, well, all the things that they value most, know, political freedom and, you know, the good society and freedom of speech and all that sort of stuff, that it came from the Greeks. Human rights came from the Greeks. Human rights is kind of bred into us. It's in our DNA. It's universal. Well, no.

It's absolutely not universal. The ancient Greeks were incredibly cruel. They were barbarous towards each other. Whatever we got, whatever Britain, whatever the West got from the Greeks, and it was considerable. There was no doubt, know, the Greeks made a tremendous contribution. civilized values, what we think of as civilized values, by which I mean like respect for every human life.

respect for the integrity of every human being, ⁓ putting justice and compassion at the pinnacle of how social, how we should organise ourselves as a society, the importance of justice, one law for all, and putting other people first. All those things, they were instilled in the West.

through the mechanism of Christianity, they actually come from Judaism, from the Hebrew Bible. Now virtually nobody acknowledges this, very few people even know about that. So it seemed to me from way back that the West was doing itself tremendous harm, that it had set out to destroy itself, to destroy its core values very deliberately. It told itself that the West was born in the original sins of, you know,

colonialism and in the Britain's case, imperialism, the empire. It was founded on gross injustice. And more than that, the very idea of the Western nation state was something that caused people to hate each other. you ⁓ denied the importance of the Western nation state, if you imposed ⁓ or subscribed to what is called

what are called universal values, then you would get rid of basically, you get rid of bigotry and prejudice and hatred from the human heart and you would never have war again. It was John Lennon's imagine, the perfect Nirvana, imagine a world in which there is no nation, no religion, ⁓ nothing to fight or die for and that's where we've got to. Now I realized very early on that if they believed that, which they did and do,

then they would never defend the West. They told themselves it wasn't worth defending and they would never defend it because they didn't allow themselves to believe the truth, which was that Western values based on the Hebrew Bible mediated through Christianity had created the good things of the West, which we call civilized values. Secular people also call them civilized values.

Now, we didn't understand that or the West didn't understand that, but I did. And I wasn't alone, but there were very few of us who thought like that at the time. And I'm talking now about, as I say, the eighties or the nineties. And I think the reason I thought that was because I was born and bred in a Jewish family. No, it wasn't a very observant Jewish family, but it was an Orthodox Jewish family. We belonged to an Orthodox synagogue.

My parents weren't observant in the sense that we were not Shabbat observant. We didn't observe the Sabbath strictly. And they went to, we went to the synagogue three times a year on the high holy days of ⁓ the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But nevertheless, I was brought up with Jewish ethics. ⁓ The belief that, ⁓ all the beliefs that I had were Jewish beliefs. ⁓ And I understood the importance therefore of

religious belief. And I understood the importance of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible to create, you know, the good things of life, moral principles, taking responsibility for yourself and all that. And I think this gave me a perspective to look upon the attempted negation of Christianity, the flight from Christianity, the embrace of secularism and secular ideologies that put the individual first. They put

me, I first and diminish the we altogether. And I kind of understood that that was absolutely devastating for the whole idea of community, the whole idea of a society based on cooperating with each other in a shared cultural and national project. ⁓ And I think that, let's say that came very much from ⁓ my background ⁓ and it's something that, you know, ⁓

As events unfolded, everything that happened kind of reinforced my kind of instinctive understanding that I had had all those years previously.

Andrew Parker (16:23)
Well, Judeo-Christian values are really at the core of it. Thousands and thousands of years of pulling us out of the darkness and the dark ages, frankly. the fact that so many are willing easily to toss them aside ⁓ with secular views of Zoran Mandani and

Bernie Sanders and the whole sort of myth of it all is scary and it's dangerous. We're talking to Melanie Phillips, British journalist, author, ⁓ really an outstanding public commentator. Go get her most recent ⁓ book, The Builder's Stone, How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only.

they can save it. And we do have quite a bit of saving to do because things are not headed in the right ⁓ direction at all. ⁓ Melanie has written consistently about anti-Semitism, historic truth, and the importance of getting it right, getting the history right, which today is anathema to what we are seeing ⁓ day in and day out.

It is all about twisting and rewriting and revising ⁓ history and ⁓ truth. And the dangers of Holocaust denial, we talked about a little bit before we came on the air, Melanie. ⁓ I want to ask not so much about the very important trial.

⁓ back in 2000, 25 years ago, where, what was his name? David Irving ⁓ sued Deborah Lipstad in 2000 for a book Lipstad wrote in 1993 that Irving claims ⁓ wrongly accused him of Holocaust denial, ⁓ antisemitism, ⁓ and hate.

And it went to trial in Britain and you covered that that many years ago at least ⁓ to some extent and I I wanted not so much to talk about ⁓ That trial and and kind of the details of it but to bring it forward to what 25 years later We are facing and I would say on steroids

the ⁓ battle over truth.

Melanie Phillips (19:22)
Well, indeed, it's remarkable to think of that ⁓ libel case ⁓ all those years ago where, you know, well, first of all, because of the English libel laws as they obtained in those days, particularly, ⁓ few people thought that Deborah Lipstadt would win that case. They thought that David Irving would win his case against her. And it turned into a trial of his ideas and he lost.

And that was a spectacular victory at the time, given, as I say, the libel laws of England. But looking back from the perspective from where we are now, ⁓ it is a very extraordinary thing that, you know, you had Holocaust revisionism as effectively put on trial and it lost. today it was declared to be a lie, effectively. And today...

Holocaust revisionism is almost mandatory among the so-called thinking classes. It's been, it's been, it's been, you know, there's been so much revisionism, so many lies that have been told about the Jews and their history and present-day Israel that we're living through an entirely revisionist ⁓ era in which the idea of truth, as you just said, has completely gone out the window.

⁓ And it is a devastating thing because I think that few of us at the time, ⁓ even those of us who were pleasantly surprised by the fact that Deborah Lipstadt won that famous victory, I think few of us would have perceived the extent to which virtually the entire thinking class of the West, and particularly of Britain, would have fallen for a set of...

demonstrably ridiculous, ahistorical lies about the Jewish people to the extent that they have. I don't think, you know, none of us had any illusions about anti-Semitism. We all understood perfectly well that it was always going to be with us. But even those of us, as I say, were skeptical about that trial wouldn't have imagined the degree to which the West's thinking classes would have fallen for such lying on such a scale.

Andrew Parker (21:44)
And the dangers ⁓ that we face in light of the willingness of people, people of great, ⁓ large thought, professors, akimeditians, you realize that in the 1930s, the first that turned toward a Nazi ⁓ sort of regime were the academics, the theorists.

and the elites in our institutions of higher learning, which I talk about quite often on this show, and I put quotes around it I kind of make fun of it, institutions of higher learning. ho, ho, ho, you know, those guys who have a little bit of a belly laugh and are going to speak and everyone should be quiet to listen to the wisdom with which they bring forth.

Of course what they're saying is is nonsense, but worse than that it is overt ⁓ Lies and and it's done with such vitriol and ⁓ research and you know that they cloak it in this This truth but worse than that

The technology that we are now dealing with puts all of this, as I say, on steroids. And AI is going to make it even worse. So you have at least two generations, maybe more, that have grown up with an understanding of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and more that is so foreign to any truth.

That it's like living in an alternate universe.

Melanie Phillips (23:44)
Well, sometime in the 70s or 80s, I forget when, ⁓ truth was abolished by the people in universities. The idea of objective truth went out the window. It was considered to be ⁓ evidence that you were an imbecile ⁓ or crazy ⁓ if you believed in objective truth. All sophisticated, educated people believed that truth was relative. It was all a matter of opinion. Well, it was all a matter of opinion. And if there is no objective truth, there's no such thing as a lie.

And consequently, people became unable to distinguish between truth and lies. And consequently, the people who had cultural power for various reasons, their truth became the truth. In other words, lies became seen as truth. And that's been a terrible tragedy for the West. But the thing is this, and this is a difference, think, historic difference between Britain and America. And it's not so true today, but it certainly was true when I was growing up.

even until fairly recently, the British throughout their history or for a very, many, many centuries have been profoundly skeptical of the intelligentsia. They've been profoundly skeptical of ideas. I think really ever since the French Revolution, ⁓ which was inspired by an idea, an idea of ⁓ that a society run along the lines of reason would lead to liberty and all good things. And the result,

was the French Revolutionary terror. And I think there was a tremendous reaction to that in Britain. And indeed conservatism ⁓ started really at that point. Various thinkers, particularly Edmund Burke said, this is inimical to life and liberty ⁓ and we must defend what we have, which is our basic values. And that was kind of the basis of conservatism. Now, the British, I think from that point,

became deeply, deeply, deeply skeptical of people who had ⁓ highfalutin ideas, deeply skeptical of people who lived in the world of ideas, deeply skeptical of the intelligentsia. And they laughed at them. They didn't take them seriously. They were very anchored. The British people were very much anchored in the reality of the here and now, in empiricism, what they could see happening.

the reality, the everyday lived reality of their lives. And it kept the British, I think, ⁓ sane, decent and free. ⁓ Now scroll on and we have a very different situation in which that healthy skepticism and indeed ⁓ dislike of and fear of and suspicion of the intelligentsia ⁓ is still there, but it's been eroded.

badly and one of the reasons it's been eroded is that the intelligentsia has so much expanded. When I was a child, when I was a young person, going to university marked you out as one of a small band of young men and women who were ⁓ smart enough for a university education. It wasn't for everybody and the British system meant that the vast majority of people didn't have.

university education, they didn't get a degree. In due course, ⁓ governments came to came into power, particularly the Labour government of Tony Blair, which said this is deeply unfair and unjust and it's holding back the working class, the blue collar, the blue collar classes, and that basically everybody should be able to have higher education and everybody should be able to have a degree.

And consequently, the standards of education were lowered and a lot of people went to universities, went to university who really ⁓ couldn't cope with it. And consequently, the standard of university education was lowered. The whole, the whole, all the standards of education were lowered. Now, bad as that was, it had one very interesting effect. The number, the proportion of people who are the educated classes, i.e. they've had a university education.

has now enormously expanded from when I was a young person. And consequently, since it is the case that people who've gone through university and who become the educated elites of the society, since they are now such a very large proportion of people, there is a very large proportion of people who believe in ridiculous ideas because the universities have given way to the idea that there is no such thing as truth. They have stopped teaching

young people how to think and instead of teaching young people what to think and that's true of schooling as well. And so you have this vast expansion of people who believe in nonsense on stilts and believe that therefore that qualifies them to be an educated person and consequently it's very difficult for people who are who don't have that ⁓ view of the world to make their voice heard.

They are ridiculed, are vilified and so on. But they're smaller in number than they were. And so the balance has shifted. And so we have this enormous echo chamber of people repeating total rubbish and at the worst of it, ⁓ propaganda from, for example, the whole Palestinian Arab issue, which has so consumed all progressive opinion in the West.

Andrew Parker (29:30)
Well, absolutely fabulous comments. I couldn't agree more, but much more important than that as a lawyer, I get to go in front of judges and make ⁓ arguments. And I am going to steal the phrase that you just use. That is nonsense on stilts is what that is.

Melanie Phillips (29:53)
I'm afraid to say I didn't invent it. think

it was a thinker of the past. I think it was Jeremy Bentham, one of the great stellar thinkers of the past. I'm not sure it was Jeremy Bentham, but I can certainly tell you it wasn't original to me. So you're very welcome to use it.

Andrew Parker (30:12)
I am taking it and I appreciate it very much for introducing it to me. ⁓ I now wanna shift ⁓ a little bit to some examples of what you're talking about. And one of the, geez, I mean, most horrific examples is the treatment of October 7th.

Melanie Phillips (30:16)
Ha ha!

Andrew Parker (30:39)
in the milieu, in society, by governments, but also by the learned class, as you talk about. It is amazing, and it is most frightening. And of course, what I'm talking about is October 7, 2023, one of the most horrific days in human history. In human history.

You cannot watch what happened on that day because if you do, you can never unwatch it. And so what is the reaction to this truth? It is to boil it down to nothing. And on October 8th and thereafter, to march in the streets,

Not against what happened on October 7th, but against some new oppression from a different definition of oppression from the revisionist of truth of what oppression is. women's group, mean, it could go down the line as to who has fallen into this trap. And you talk a little bit about ⁓

You know, I see what we talk about and see here in the United States, but how Europe has reacted ⁓ to October 7th.

Melanie Phillips (32:20)
Well, it wasn't just perverse, was its pathological. It defies ⁓ belief ⁓ to the extent to which ⁓ such a terrible event and the necessary defense against it being repeated has been misrepresented as aggression on the part of Israel. I think it's important to first of all to acknowledge that those demonstrations are anything but spontaneous. ⁓

I think the very first demonstration took place on October 7 itself on the afternoon. I think it was in London. And certainly October 8 ⁓ demonstrations had started ⁓ shrieking genocide and all the rest of it. And the Israelis hadn't finished stopping the Hamas from murdering Israelis in the south of Israel. They were still fighting them in Israel. ⁓

killings of Israelis were still going on. The IDF hadn't invaded, hadn't done anything in Gaza, hadn't started the war ⁓ in Gaza, the air war, which started some days later. And yet there were these demonstrations accusing Israel of genocide and so on. So what was going on? Well, I think two things are going on. Of course, that accelerated.

over the last two years and produced the scenes that we've seen, these terrible demonstrations which are calling for the murder of Jews, the destruction of Israel, with the police standing by. And I think led by the Islamic world, elements in the Islamic world, ⁓ agents of variously the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, Iran, Hamas, who are planted throughout the West in alliance with their

with the supporters of the Palestinian Arabs ⁓ in Western liberal leftist society. ⁓ So ⁓ that was all going on. ⁓ But ⁓ I think two things explain it, this madness. And they don't really explain it, but they come some way towards explaining it. First of all, ⁓ as I say, it's led by the Islamic world and the slogans, ⁓

the incitement against Jews and against Israel is very much part of Palestinian Arab ⁓ discourse. It's what they tell themselves decade in, decade out. And they have found a very receptive audience and instantaneous.

kind of army of demonstrators in the liberal left in the West, which have signed up pretty well universally ⁓ to the Palestinian Arab cause. And they've bought into the whole narrative and they've bought into the nonsense about genocide and the Israelis and Nazis and so on. And so, ⁓ you know, they have cooperated on that basis alone.

So there's that kind of ideological alliance. But I think something deeper and darker even than that has been going on. And I think it was encapsulated by the scenes that we all saw on social media from the time when the hostages were taken ⁓ and posters were put up on the streets of London and other Western cities, posters of the hostages stuck up on street furniture, walls.

street lamps, so on so forth. And we saw the scenes of them being torn down by with people with their fingernails tearing them down all over the West. And some of these faces of these people tearing these posters down were shown and they were faces that were often convulsed with anger, rage and hatred. And you have to you had to ask yourself who sat there looking at these pictures.

these images and you thought what sort of people will be doing this? Why are they so enraged? Because after all, what are they tearing down? They weren't tearing down posters saying have a great career in the Israel Defense Forces. They weren't tearing down posters saying have a great vacation in Eilat. They were pictures of babies, children, women and some men who we all knew had been kidnapped.

into Gaza and were being kept as hostages, probably underground, is what we thought at the time, probably underground, subjected to untold horrors of torture, rape, murder, starvation, abuse. And we knew that was going to happen. We knew that would be happening because we saw that behavior exhibited on October 7 and subsequently in the way in which

The captives were treated when they were taken into Gaza. We saw the footage of the abuse meted out to them, both living and dead hostages. And so you have to ask yourself, what sort of people would be so enraged by pictures of these innocents who were undergoing this terrible treatment that they had to tear them down? And it seemed to me that

What was going on was the absolute refusal to accept the idea that Israelis and Israeli Jews could be victims at all, because the people doing the tearing down, and they were part of this whole madness that's taken over the progressive side of the West, have for the last several decades told themselves as an article of faith that to be a decent person,

To be a moral person, you have to take the side of the Palestinian Arabs. Why? Because they are people who have been oppressed and ill-treated by the terrible Israelis who have colonized them and are continuing to oppress them. So if it was the case, that was clearly the case, that the people they have supported as victims of the Israelis, that those Palestinian Arabs, supposedly victims of the Israelis,

were guilty of the most barbaric, savage, depraved, sadistic, torture, rape, and slaughter of people that the Western liberals had told themselves were the oppressors of those Palestinian Arabs. If that were true, that the Israeli Jews were victims of the Arabs, then what did that make the Western liberal? It made them accessories to

evil instead of being defining themselves as moral, upstanding, good people because they supported the Palestinian Arabs, it will reveal themselves to themselves as having supported evil and therefore they were evil people. They couldn't have that. So they literally had to tear down those images. And it seemed to me watching it that they weren't just tearing down the pictures of these Israeli innocents who were being held hostage.

They were trying to tear out of their heads and their hearts and their consciences the idea of Jewish victimization and the idea of the Jews altogether. They wanted them gone. Gone from the visible world. That's how it seemed to me. And so you're dealing with a pathology here which quite honestly defies, ultimately defies rational explanation.

Andrew Parker (40:31)
And Cornel West, you know the professor, Cornel West of the United States, brilliant mind that he is, he suggests, no, in fact, it is that this was so heinous and horrendous and these atrocities went beyond any human ⁓ creativity even that proves the fact

Melanie Phillips (40:35)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Parker (40:59)
that the Palestinians are oppressed because only an oppressed people would do such heinous things.

Melanie Phillips (41:08)
Well,

yes, except that the Jews are the quintessential oppressed people and we never behaved like that.

Andrew Parker (41:13)
no, no.

Yeah, you would think. Of course, that is only based on history, and that is only based on if you learn the truth about history over the thousands of years and the hundreds and hundreds of examples that can be given and proven and established. But why be bothered with that truth and those facts?

Melanie Phillips (41:25)
Only.

Andrew Parker (41:39)
Because that doesn't go with the narrative at all.

Melanie Phillips (41:43)
Well, you're dealing with secular ideology. And the point about ideology is that it inspires fanaticism because an ideology is the ⁓ domination of an idea. It's an idea which drives the ology. It's an idea which drives the belief. And the idea is entirely dogmatic and it cannot be challenged. And so it literally defies reason.

It is a belief that cannot be challenged and consequently reason has nowhere to go. Truth and evidence are simply dismissed and you cannot get through that. It's like a totally sealed thought system. You we saw it in the Soviet Union and it is very, very, it's not a coincidence that we saw this in the Soviet Union, that you're dealing with a mindset which is sealed against

reason, rationality, and truth. And it's not a coincidence because the Palestinian Arab narrative was constructed, as I read, back in the 60s. It was constructed with the cooperation of the Soviet Union, which, you know, the Soviet Union had no particular skin in the Palestinian Arab game, except that it understood that it was a means of twisting the mind of the West.

of making the West so confused and so unable to deal with the difference between truth and lies that it would be weakened from within. And the Soviet Union knew that because they'd done it to their own people. That's exactly what they did. Black was white, truth was lies, reality was unreality. They knew it.

Andrew Parker (43:27)
Yes. Solzhenitsyn

wrote all about it. Sharansky wrote all about it.

Melanie Phillips (43:31)
Right, indeed,

indeed. And so they exported it through the Palestinian Arab narrative. And to me, the Palestinian Arab narrative has been the Trojan horse by which, through which the Islamic world has made such inroads into the West and has got underneath the West's defenses. But it's also made inroads in the way that the old Soviet Union always wanted.

that the West would be weakened, would be unable to defend itself against its adversaries because it no longer understood what it was and it no longer understood the difference between truth and lies. And it's worked. It's worked like a dream.

Andrew Parker (44:15)
Yes, it has, and we could probably go back. I can't do it as I sit here, ⁓ and mark the day when Yasser Arafat decided we are not going to win on the battlefield. We are going to win in the minds and hearts of people who across the world will end up defending us and vilifying the Jews. ⁓

Melanie Phillips (44:32)
Exactly.

Exactly.

Andrew Parker (44:38)
Yeah, easy to launch from the mountaintop of anti-Semitism for years and years out. How difficult is it to get people to hate the Jews? I mean, you you move across the street and that's how quickly you can get it done. I want to turn a minute to this concept that you write so eloquently about, ⁓ the concept of multiculturalism.

and does multiculturalism work? Can we do what the progressives really are pushing for in the name of diversity and inclusion? Having multiculturalism, you know, we're coming to you from, I know you're in Jerusalem, we're in ⁓ Minneapolis.

Melanie Phillips (45:20)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Parker (45:31)
And Minnesota has gotten worldly recognized over the last several years, not for much good, unfortunately. And at the foundation of it, at least this whole fraud analysis, is multiculturalism, is it not?

Melanie Phillips (45:32)
⁓ No.

Yeah.

Yep,

indeed. Well, you know, the progressive world has told itself for years that what's, you know, what a good society should look like is a multicultural society. Now, the words multicultural society are a contradiction in terms. Multiculturalism dissolves society. Why is this? So people think that multiculturalism just means being nice and respectful to other cultures. No, it doesn't mean that. We should all do that.

That should be the kind of starting point of any decent civilized society. You respect other cultures, you respect other faiths, you respect other traditions. Of course, multiculturalism says something quite different. It says that all cultures are equal in value to each other. And so no culture can stand up and say what we believe, what our culture stands for, is superior to other cultures.

As a result, when the West's progressive circles adopted multiculturalism, they adopted this idea that the West could not say that things like ⁓ freedom of speech, equality for women, ⁓ of people not to have a religion at all, and other stuff like that, they couldn't say that, ⁓ one law for all, these core values of the West.

a one law for all equality for women, freedom of speech. The West couldn't say that those were superior to cultures which did not believe in equality for women, which said that freedom of speech could not be allowed to permit ⁓ offense against ⁓ Islam ⁓ and ⁓ so on. And consequently, ⁓

the West stopped believing or adhering to and stopped promoting the things that made it the West. ⁓ It could not bring itself to condemn ⁓ minorities that it believed were sanctified by having been oppressed by the white capitalist ⁓ West over many years. ⁓

Andrew Parker (48:10)
So if you're oppressed,

the law doesn't apply to you. Thou shall not murder does not apply to you because you're oppressed.

Melanie Phillips (48:14)
That's it.

Well,

they don't they don't go quite that far in Britain anyway, but it is pretty close. It is pretty close because what we've seen is is separate development. We've seen this idea, particularly relating to Islam. And I say Islam because of this. And let's be quite clear. There are many, many, OK.

Andrew Parker (48:20)
It's close.

Well, would use Hamas, Melanie, just, I would use

Hamas as a prime example.

Melanie Phillips (48:39)
Well, no, I'm talking about Britain, because that's where multiculturalism is. I don't think anybody would say Gaza was multicultural, even me.

Andrew Parker (48:46)
No, no, they wouldn't. But

what I'm talking about are the oppressed getting a pass as it relates to things that obviously are antithetical to Western culture. And that is murder.

Melanie Phillips (48:53)
Yeah.

Well...

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Well, you know, the Islamic world, you know, when it started, when it it said, if any newspaper, you know, if any, if newspapers published, disobliging pictures of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, the newspapers face being burned to the ground. And we saw these riots across the world. And instead of standing up and saying, we're not having that we're having freedom of speech, everybody caved in.

Andrew Parker (49:18)
Yes.

Melanie Phillips (49:26)
and newspapers will no longer print these images. It's stuff like that. And there's all kinds of other stuff like that, ⁓ particularly relating to Islam. Now, it's very important to acknowledge, particularly in Britain and other parts of the West and America, that there are many, many, many Muslims who are no problem to anybody, who are perfectly decent, upright citizens of Britain and America. They've bought into ⁓ Western values. That's why they live in America. That's why they live in Britain.

Andrew Parker (49:29)
Great example.

Melanie Phillips (49:56)
But unfortunately, there's a very, very large number, possibly a minority, but still a very large minority, who will not have that and who insists that America and Britain and the West have to to Islam. Now, the traditional liberal settlement arrived at as a result of the Western enlightenment, where toleration of minorities was invented.

⁓ The deal was that ⁓ Western societies would welcome immigrants and their culture. It would tolerate communities of faith and culture being established within them. And that was a big advance. ⁓ But all those minorities had to accept that they lived by the core values of that society. And those core values, I've just said, you know, one law for all.

⁓ equality for women, ⁓ freedom of religion, i.e. you can be free not to have a religion and stuff like that. Now every minority, every minority in the West, in Britain, in America, has signed up to those values except for one. Islam. ⁓ The Islamic world. As I say, many, Muslims have signed up. But the dominant narrative, the dominant political narrative in the Islamic world is you don't sign up. The far from

Muslims in Britain and America having to adapt to Western ⁓ cultural core, Western norms, ⁓ the West, Britain and America must adapt to Islam. ⁓ And so Britain and parts of America increasingly have tolerated the growth of an alternative legal order. Okay, everyone is under the law, except that, you know, we ignore in Britain, we ignore the people say to themselves, the authorities say to themselves, we ignore the fact that, you know,

there are Sharia enclaves. We try and ignore that. We don't think it's a problem because it's their own law. It doesn't really bother us. Well, it should bother them because the point about Sharia law is that it does not recognize any superior authority. By definition, it does not recognize the law of the land because Sharia law is the word of God. And consequently, it cannot be superseded by the law of the land. So immediately you have an alternative

legal structure in that community. That community does not feel bound by the law of the land. Now you can't have that in a liberal, in a democratic western state. You cannot have a whole set of people who are not adhering to or not in their, you know, they don't believe they should adhere to the law of the land. ⁓ It sets up, it's innately subversive. Now nobody can talk about this without being, you know, shrieked at for Islamophobia and so on.

This is what multiculturalism does. It says, we are not entitled to say that you must live according to our law, the core law, the core cultural norms of our society. We're not entitled to say that. And then you have overlaid on that the fact that from within the Islamic world over the years, there have been numerous acts of terrorism and in cultural intimidation. So people have been frightened into

into not upholding the cultural norms of the West. This is a course of cultural suicide. Britain is well advanced down this road, well advanced, so are other ⁓ European nations. America is not well advanced down this road, but it is encroaching all the time. You talk about Minnesota, where you are, there's also Texas of all places, Texas, with enormous sharia enclaves being established.

Andrew Parker (53:43)
Yes.

Yes.

Melanie Phillips (53:47)
And there is Mr. Mamdani in New York. Now the difference between America and Britain is very significant because in America, there's a fight. There's going to be a fight. There is a fight. There's going to be a fight because, you know, America has energetic ⁓ individuals with many churches behind them who understand what it is to be American and who will fight to defend

Andrew Parker (53:50)
Yes.

Melanie Phillips (54:15)
what it is to be American. understand the point about American exceptionalism. They understand the fact that America is founded in the values of the Hebrew Bible mediated by Christianity. They get all that and they will fight for it. In Britain, there is no fight. There is no fight. That's the problem. There are pockets of people who get it and who are standing up and are speaking, but they are howled down.

They suffer professional and social ostracism as a result. It's not exactly an inducement to speaking up for what is right and proper. And there is no political force behind this in the same way that there is in America.

Andrew Parker (55:01)
So I wanna ask you, that very question is a good segue to it, and that is whether Europe is lost. Think about that. A comment though, as it relates to Sharia law. Now, interestingly, Jewish law applies to Jews, Orthodox Jews, et cetera. And there are entire court systems. Indeed, the first court system known in human civilization.

came out of Judaism with the Sanhedrin. But Jewish law and the teachings of Judaism are that you must marry that with the law of the society that you are living in. And it is not superior to the extent that it supersedes ⁓ what is in that ⁓ civil construct.

But in Islam, in Islam it is. And it's a huge difference.

Melanie Phillips (56:00)
That's exactly right.

That's exactly right. Yes, I mean,

absolutely. I mean, people look at Jewish religious courts and they say, well, it's the same thing. Sharia courts, Jewish courts. What's the difference? We tolerate the Jewish stuff and that's fine. That's no problem. So the Muslim stuff is no problem. Well, no, the Jewish courts are effectively informal arbitration tribunals. Jews in the diaspora have always understood the cardinal principle.

is the law of the land is the law you observe the law of the land you do not supersede it in any way at all so you yes yes exactly

Andrew Parker (56:41)
It is the opposite with Islam.

So is Europe lost? Because I look over there, you got Jeremy Corbyn a few years ago, what, a decade ago or two, the filth of his ideas continue, I believe, probably stronger than when he first raised them. And that's just in Britain, and then across Europe, it just looks, it looks dangerous.

Melanie Phillips (56:47)
No!

Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah.

Well, it is dangerous and it could be, it could be, know, I great cultures die. know from, you know, Rome fell. But I, you may call me, you know, insanely optimistic. I don't think it's over till it's over. And I don't think that the West has begun to fight back yet. Now, would it ever fight back? Well, the cards are, the cards are being

more heavily stacked against the West and its core culture with every week that passes. ⁓ But then you look at, ⁓ you have to look at the thing in the round and in the round you find a situation having developed over the last few years and I believe this is accelerating in which a very large number of people in Britain, in Europe ⁓ in particular, ⁓

have understood that their ⁓ culture and their nation is being taken away from them ⁓ by the combination of two things, the ⁓ encroachment of the Islamic world, but that has only been made possible by the fact that the indigenous European society has lost the will to fight for itself because it no longer knows what it is and it's told itself that it's rotten at the core and it won't fight for itself.

Now that is beginning to change under pressure from ordinary people who know perfectly well that what they ⁓ belong to, that the culture they belong to is infinitely superior to the Islamic world, and that they have no intention of allowing themselves quietly to lose everything that they hold dear about the way they live and to be taken over by a culture that would extinguish personal freedom.

in the way that Islam would. And that pressure has created what's called the populist movement. Now we can all have different views about some of these populist parties that have emerged in Europe and in Britain. Some of them have very troubling pasts anchored in ⁓ neo-Nazi far-right thinking. Some of those have reformed themselves. Well, maybe they have, maybe they haven't. We don't know. Some of them are just conservatives.

who want to reassert core European and Western values. But whatever one thinks about those populist parties and those populist politicians, the facts I think are undeniable that there is this tremendous upsurge of feeling among millions and millions of ordinary members of the public in Britain and Europe who want their country and their culture to be defended, to be upheld, to be defended and to fight off attempts to

overthrow it and that is clearly the case also in America. So ⁓ I think that you know the battle hasn't been engaged yet. Now to engage in that battle is going to be extremely difficult and it will in my view necessarily entail measures which a liberal society will quail at because it will think that it's illiberal. ⁓ But the paradox of a liberal society

is that in order for it to remain a traditional liberal society, it may have to take illiberal measures. If it doesn't take illiberal measures, it will no longer exist as a liberal society at all. And that is the nettle that has to be grasped. And few people are grasping it. ⁓ But I think that as time goes on, if I'm right in thinking that this

kind of existential Western crisis is going to continue to develop, then I think that minds are going to be increasingly focused in a more realistic fashion on what needs to be done. You see, I don't think people are necessarily collectively suicidal, culturally suicidal. I think that the trajectory that the West is engaged on now is suicidal.

But I think that there millions of people who don't want to go gently into that terrible good night at all. They will fight for it. And the fighting, if it comes to it, won't be pretty. It's not something to be encouraged. I quail at the thought of it. ⁓ It can have ferocious ⁓ effects. And it can produce leaders who are really obnoxious, really bad people. It doesn't necessarily produce good people.

So I'm not starry-eyed about this. I think that if there is a fight, it has a very uncertain outcome. It may produce a swing from one terrible thing to another terrible thing. We have to be prepared for that. But if you're asking, is it all over? No, it's not all over.

Andrew Parker (1:02:22)
Melanie Phillips, a big, big thank you for coming on the Andrew Parker show. It has been a fascinating discussion. I have so enjoyed it. A comment on the last ⁓ references that you've made. ⁓ I think Donald Trump here in the United States has slowed the slip-sliding away to

comment on a, what was it, a Simon and Garfunkel song maybe from years ago. ⁓ The slip sliding away by the United States, driven by the intelligentsia here in the United States, the education that is being ⁓ foisted upon our generations, our youth, coming out of college with, you know.

Melanie Phillips (1:02:56)
those.

Andrew Parker (1:03:17)
crazy ideas and a lack of understanding of history or truth. ⁓ But as we slip slide away, Trump has pushed back on that. And yes, he's done it in an audacious way, in a very ⁓ non-genteel way for sure, and in a way that Europe probably hates as they keep getting scolded and have to go back to their room.

and think about what they did, which is the way he treats Europe. ⁓ You know, frankly, for this day and time, I think it's kind of refreshing that he does that. He slaps them upside the head and says, you know, wake up, wake up! And ⁓ hopefully he will continue to do that, but I have very little... ⁓

Confidence that there will be other Donald Trump's behind him and in fact I think they are going to be less and less and that the Republican Party itself is ⁓ Not that the Republican Party is so wonderful because it isn't ⁓ but the Republican Party itself is And the nature of its existence and I'm concerned about it

Melanie Phillips (1:04:33)
you

Andrew Parker (1:04:43)
because the progressives here in the United States, we have seen who their leaders are. And you're right, we're just a few years behind Europe. And Europe has experienced these things and we're seeing what is happening ⁓ with Europe and its attempt to be multicultural by bringing Muslims in and ⁓ it's changed society there.

It's got to be amazing, your life from when you were a young child to where you sit today and to have seen all of that arc ⁓ has just got to have been amazing. Melanie Phillips, thank you so much for joining us on the Andrew Parker Show. It really has been a pleasure to chat with you.

Melanie Phillips (1:05:32)
The pleasure has been mine. Thank you very much for having me.

Andrew Parker (1:05:36)
Well, until next time, I want to make sure that you go to theandrewparkershow.com. You'll find what some people refer to as an award-winning website. Yes, indeed. You should also go to Parker Daniels Keyboard. ⁓ ParkerDK.com. That's right, ParkerDK.com to learn about premier litigation law firm downtown Minneapolis. ⁓

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That's 952-522-2818. Maybe you disagree with Melanie Phillips. Maybe you disagree with Andrew Parker and Melanie Phillips because we agree. We agree down the line. But we want to hear from you if you do disagree. Discourse and open discourse, very important, so long as we're both talking down the path of truth. That's all we ask. Truth, right down the path. And by the way, truth is not relative.

Okay? It is not. Until next time, be kind to your neighbor. Thanks again for joining us.