Douglas Murray on the Doubling Down on Social Justice During Coronavirus

because if they continue to do things like Chaz the six-block place in Seattle I mean that seemed like almost a little bit of a test a little bit of a test run I mean they did a Mad Max style takeover of six blocks in Seattle and held it for a considerable amount of time with the compliance of the mayor who called it the summer of love I know I saw a video of that of what happened after Chaz and there were like zombie like people lying around on the grass everything seemed to be covered in urine and there weren't any statues obviously there were a hell of a lot of plinths and everything had graffiti over and I thought people should realize this is what you inherit you'll inherit rubble yes you'll inherit piss-stained rubble and I'm not sure how many people have got that lesson yet well they should read your book the madness of crowds is excellent it really is it's a very good book and you know you wrote that book before the shit really hit the fan but it was eerily accurate in many ways when you were you were talking about the current problems and where they could lead and there's there's so much of what you were saying in that book that could be used as a like a guide to what's happening that's what I hoped I mean I did it a year ago I've updated it now and well basically because now is that it's out this month is that basically I thought something very interesting happened through the covered era which was that at the beginning of it I thought like we all thought okay this is a plague like the Justinian plague it's gonna end the Empire you know we're all gonna lose massive numbers of our loved ones and if that's the case at least at these end times the social justice warriors will pipe down you know there's my one consolation was I thought at least at least we won't have to deal with them so much because if everyone's got real problems if everyone's got real complaints kind of microaggressions start to seem less important than they have done in recent years so that was my assumption at the beginning was if the plague was what it seemed at first then we'd hear less from these people and then my impression was it as as as covered went on something very interesting happened which was that our tolerance for the social justice activists diminished I mean they were little little things like little bits of light like Sam Smith you know from his mansion posts a photo of him sort of crying a bit and sort of sad cuz he's lonely and normally that would be oh Sam Smith they they is feeling bad and and and so on and there was just total of we don't care we don't care who's Sam Smith Sam Smith is a brilliant I'm so pleased you don't know of him fills me with joy he's got a horrible horrible whiny voice he sang the one of the worst bond saw theme songs against some really stiff competition as you know and it was one that nobody had anyhow Sam Smith was a guy who came out as gay then as genderqueer and then as non-binary or look at me it should be called coming out as look at me yeah what the fuck is non-binary my god so then he came out as look at me and then a bit later he wanted more attention he posted a photo himself in his mansion saying you know how it's difficult he was finding covered and just there was a complete lack of empathy oh my god and and I sort of thought things like that were a good sign you know because we go that that's it you know if at best we're all gonna see a massive decline in our living standards and our whole societies have got mass unemployment and so on then I thought well at least we'll hear a bit less from those guys and then several things happened the first was that that some people started doing things along the following as you know in madness of crowds I do each of these in turn I do gay women that is relations between the sexes race and trans and I noticed that the women thing came in first that people started saying things like women are suffering most from covered and I thought well okay we've got to look at the stats on this and then the stats came in and it showed that men were disproportionately likely to die and then the same people said well the men might be doing the dying but the women are doing the suffering or something and that didn't make very much sense but it showed there were some people who needed to look at this through the prison they've looked through everything which is women men disproportionate relations between the sexes and then you've got some people doing that with gay the BBC in my own country in Britain started running pieces about you know it's difficult for a lot of LGBT people because they're living with their families who might be homophobic and again you know you sort of read these stories you thought well yeah a lot of people are living with their families who are the well their families I mean they're having to live with their mom and dad and they might be heterosexual they've just been forced into chastity by government regulations you know that you know to me it's difficult for everyone yes why do we need single that out then there was a story about somebody who I kid you not by the way Joe you'll love this one the BBC had a story which was of a trans person who said right headline was I'm I'm I'm fearful that I'm going to be buried in the wrong gender oh boy and of course I just thought well a lot of us are just fearful of being buried you know period yeah please call me a woman when I'm dead I don't fuck you can miss gender me all you like I just I don't want to be buried that's not this year there's so much nonsense so that sort of thing started happening I thought oh this is just they're just but again I still thought they'll double down but the majority won't listen to them and then Minnesota happened and the race one came back with a vengeance and that had been happening through covered obviously because in all of our countries we had this thing of ethnic minorities particularly black people suffering disproportionately from the virus and what I was worried about was that in the American media and the British media and elsewhere this was being portrayed as if as if the if this was the case and it does seem to be then it was because like America couldn't even import a virus from China without giving it its own special racist spin you know that all of the things that you could look at to explain why there might be a higher mortality rate including higher numbers of perhaps nurses in the health service underlying health issues and and much more that that wasn't being focused on it kept on being portrayed as if this could only be because of racism and and that just worried me so I thought even a virus a pandemic can't bring us together and we still have these people doing this but as I say it wasn't till after Minnesota that then that really took off and we discovered something very important which is that but the racism and the whole issue of race is even more important than trying to avoid the pandemic and and that and everything that's flowed from it is just rolling on and on it's very very worrying it's everything I feared would happen which was everybody doubling down on these identity traits in the era when we all hoped we could move beyond them you know we also got to this weird point where we're supposed to collectively ignore the fact that having 50,000 people marching through the streets arm-in-arm could easily be spreading the disease and there was this giant uptick of the disease in America and everyone stuffed their head in the sand and pretended they were not connected everyone wanted to pretend well it had nothing to do with the protests well if you even more yeah it's cool even more it wasn't it wasn't just clear head in the sand it was actually saying that we don't mind I'm in the medical medical professionals in America who signed a joint letter defending people going out on the protests were saying that that racism kills and so does covered but racism is clearly a bigger underlying risk than covered and if you've taken that view then everything's possible isn't it I mean I mean apart the fact is not it's clearly not true because however you would you know work out the numbers of people killed by racism which does exist but I mean the you to claim that the mortality rates from racism are higher than those from covered when what are the figures in America now you know six figures of people who've gotten thousand thousand you know I guess it's surely the people who claimed that racism kills more people than covered should have to answer and say where are the hundred and ninety thousand racist murders in America this year you know and that doesn't happen and that's medical professionals saying that well you've got everyone terrified of being labeled as a racist that yes that's where we've gotten to this point how we've gotten to this point yeah yeah well we live in an era where all of the all of the worst things you can be accused of are also not provable and not disprovable and that's something I say in the madness of crowds which is just very difficult for you know it happens every day to someone you know I mean someone gets called the whole charge sheet the homophobe transphobe misogynist racist and first of all obviously people can level that without any evidence and often knowing that it's not true but the problem is the person who is said to has no defense because you cannot actually prove you're not a racist you can't prove you're not a misogynist you can't prove you're not a homophobe it happens all the time people say you know I'm not a homophobe you know it happened with the former Australian prime minister the other day I'm not a homophobe my sister-in-law is a lesbian she married her partner and I was at the wedding but they still say he's a homophobe you know you can't prove right that the claim isn't true and the worst of that is obviously with racism so obviously everybody in the era is trying desperately to avoid the claim because once the claim is made we our society has no way to brush it off episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify that's right they're free from September 1st to December 1st they're gonna be available everywhere but after December 1st they will only be available on Spotify but they will be free that includes the video the video will also be there it'll also be free that's all we're asking just go download Spotify much love bye-bye