Why are defenders of free speech always shutting people down?

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. He can call me whatever he wants. I don't care about that. He wouldn't let me finish my speech. He wouldn't let me talk. And, you know, two or three minutes into my talk, he began screaming that this wasn't about Donald Trump and he wasn't going to allow this. And then he said, you're a guest here. You're a guest in our country. You're not being a good guest. And I said, you know what? You're a host. You should act like a host. And then he, you know, started saying I was the most pigheaded person he'd ever seen. And I said, you know what? This is why we had a revolution against people like you.

0:32That is Jamie Raskin, a senior U.S. Democrat, talking about Nigel Farage, who wouldn't let him speak at a free speech event earlier this week. And Jamie Raskin was speaking to the newsagents exclusively, his only interview whilst in the UK, about the threat to free speech. Is it real or is it just a mirage being put up by right wingers? Welcome to the newsagents.

1:01The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And the ridiculous thing is that Jamie Raskin was here with the rest of the Judiciary Committee from the House of Representatives. Its chairman is really arch MAGA supporter, Jim Jordan. And Raskin is the senior Democrat on the committee. And they were here to investigate the crisis in free speech in Europe. And you'll remember back in February, February the 14th, Valentine's Day, you had J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States of America, talking to his allies and saying the problem isn't Russia. The problem isn't China. It's you guys here in Europe.

1:44And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. Well, the moment somebody calls you their dear friend, you know what's coming. And I think he's talking particularly about a case that we're going to come on to with Jamie Ruskin in a moment. But it's this idea of how close you are allowed to stand to an abortion clinic if you want to try and petition women coming in and out of it and telling them to change their minds. And this was a cause that J.D.

2:18Vance has taken up in terms of, I think they call it the buffer zone theory, isn't it? And there are laws in the UK and there are laws in the US about where people can stand if they want to try and get people to change their mind. And right outside an abortion clinic is not one of those places you can stand. But I think from that moment on, J.D. Vance sort of set the hairs running, didn't he? By creating this sense, along I think with Elon Musk, that free speech was being shut down here in the UK. hence the trip of the Judiciary Committee to actually come and see whether any of that stands up.

2:52Yeah, and so you had Raskin and the rest of the committee, Jim Jordan, the chair of Republican members, Democrat members, on US taxpayers on a very nice trip to Britain and I think they're going to Ireland now to go and investigate the crisis in free speech in Europe. And one of the events that took place was with Nigel Farage where they're talking about the online safety act and they're talking about free speech a comparison who's got more free speech the us or the uk and jamie raskin is making his points and finds a nigel farage not very happy listen to the context of it in this interview i did with jamie raskin so you're here talking about free speech in europe is it right that yesterday you were shouted down by one Nigel Farage when you were talking about free speech and he called you pig-headed.

3:49Yeah, well, he can call me whatever he wants. I don't care about that. He wouldn't let me finish my speech. He wouldn't let me talk. We had just listened to an hour presentation by right-wing politicians and think tank people about how the European Union is essentially crushing civil freedom and how your new Online Safety Act, which was adopted to make the internet that's safe for children and so on, is actually going to destroy the right of conservatives to speak. And so we wanted to give them another perspective on that. And one of the cases they kept talking about was a guy who regretted that he and his girlfriend had had an abortion 20 years before, and he was protesting by praying near an abortion clinic.

4:32And there's a law, a buffer zone law. They were saying that this means that, you know, the UK is no longer on the side of free speech, which struck us as ridiculous because that buffer zone law exists in America. We've got a federal law on that and was upheld by a Supreme Court. So I was trying to explain that. And then and I also was talking about all of Donald Trump's attacks on free speech, the rights of law firms and the rights of universities and colleges, and he couldn't handle it. And, you know, two or three minutes into my talk, he began screaming that this wasn't about Donald Trump and he wasn't going to allow this.

5:05And then he said, you're a guest here. You're a guest in our country. You're not being a good guest. And I said, you know what? You're a host. You should act like a host. And then he, you know, started saying I was the most pigheaded person you'd ever seen. And I said, you know what? This is why we had a revolution against people like you. So I think that pretty much ended the conversation. But they didn't want to let us speak. What did you think? I mean, given given that this is about free speech, I didn't know much about Nigel Farage, But he clearly is somebody who identifies with the ultra right parties of the world, like the, you know, the French national rally, France, and, you know, the alternative for Deutschland and his party here, the reform UK.

5:46These people are in league with Donald Trump. They believe in free speech except for any speech that they don't agree with. Then they're not interested in free speech. They're interested in free speech right up until the point that your speech Criticizes them then they want to shut you down. It's exactly what trump is doing to the law firms in america It's what he's doing to the colleges and the universities in america It's what he's doing to the federal workers tens of thousands of whom, you know Have had to leave their jobs because of him have been forced out. They're not interested in free speech They're interested in free speech as a kind of political hobby horse for the campaign and that's it And once they get into power, they're like any other right wing authoritarian party.

6:25They want to extinguish the speech that they disapprove of. It's really interesting hearing the U.S. perspective on this, because I think within the U.K., and I guess one of the loudest political voices right now is Nigel Farage. All we hear about is how the left is snuffing out free speech, how woke nonsense is stopping people from being able to say whatever they want, however offensive it is. is normally the sort of tenor. And of course, when you flip that on its head, and from the Democrats perspective, from the Raskin perspective, yeah, they're now living in an authoritarian Trump world in which people aren't allowed to protest on university campuses, and they face possible arrest if they write the wrong things in an op-ed, and they get picked up off the street if they are found to have sided in one political way or not.

7:20And so I guess there's a very, very big question to be asking about free speech and just the pure hypocrisy that surrounds those who claim that it is going. Look, on Tuesday's episode of The News Agents, and I don't know if you missed it, go back and listen to it, where we discuss Peter Kyle, the science secretary, who also met with this committee yesterday, talking about the Online Safety Act and saying Nigel Farage opposing it was putting himself on the same side as Jimmy Savile. And we said, whoa, no, not fair. Nigel Farage is perfectly entitled to oppose the Online Safety Act for whatever reasons he thinks are there.

8:03That doesn't make him an apologist for Jimmy Savile. And we stood up for the free speech of Nigel Farage and we singled out the cabinet minister for being on the wrong side of this by saying something like that, which is, to all intents and purposes, is a smear. And yet when the tables are turned and it's someone criticising Donald Trump or, you know, supporting our online safety act, Nigel Farage shouts him down at this meeting. I mean, Mr Farage. It's not a good look for anyone this week, is it? It's not a good look when you have protested about the smear that was made against you. And yet you try to shut people down who you disagree with.

8:45Interestingly, the Peter Carl mystery thickens a bit because I was with him last night and I kind of said what on earth was going on? You know, what went on there? Was that a misstep? Was it misspeaking? He said, not at all. Actually, I gamed it out with my team. His spads knew about it. His political team knew about it. he was actually in conversations, I understand, with Darren Murphy, who is an old Blairite sort of political advisor, you know, an old hand at this, in other words, who has been pretty successful at political messaging in the past and is part of the sort of tech message team for Peter Carr's Science and Technology Secretary this time round.

9:25And apparently they sort of sat down and thought, well, we do need to make this connection. We're not going to end up calling Nigel Farage a paedophile. They didn't. They didn't go that far. We're not going to say he's Jimmy Savile. They didn't. But we are going to link him to that because we want to try and show, and this is in the context of a lot of unhappiness surrounding the new bill, talking about online safety and online harm to children. We need to make people understand why actually the VPN thing is not the solution to what is affecting kids right now, which is if you don't get behind this bill, you're essentially creating a space for harm to flourish.

10:05So I said, are you going to apologise? Are you going to retract that? Did you go too far? And he was like, no, I didn't, actually. I was really careful with my language. It was all gamed out ahead of time. And actually, that is the point I do want to get across. Now, you can decide whether to agree with it or disagree with it. But if we're talking about exercising free speech, but each of them, you know, Karl knew exactly what he was doing. Farage knew exactly what he was doing, asking for the apology. Look, they both think they've got the moral high ground and that's in politics a kind of uncomfortable place to be.

10:34I just want to add a little vignette to this because apparently Jim Jordan, the chair of the committee, the Republican. On completely opposite wing to Jamie Raskin. Yeah, completely, completely. He's absolutely MAGA. He had been making a public statements about what he was going to say to Peter Kyle when he met him. So when the meeting took place, Peter Kyle knew exactly what Jordan was going to say about how online safety is against free speech and it's going too far. and I'm going to tell you know so so apparently the meeting takes place and I heard this from a pretty good source and Jim Jordan is charming midwest genteel polite kind nice very happy to meet you you know there's handshakes and all the rest of it with the secretary of state Peter Kyle and then of course Kyle is sitting there waiting for the kind of you know the hammer to hit him over the head so apparently when Jim Jordan gets to the bit where he's got to deliver his pre-publicized lines about you know the British government isn't interested in free speech he doesn't look Peter Kyle in the eye once he just looks downwards and says the government isn't doing this in the way that it should be doing it and you know it was like he had to get through it as quickly as possible anyway the interview with Jamie Raskin you can hear in full and it is fascinating what he's got to say on News Agents USA.

11:51In a moment we'll be talking to the BAFTA winning actor Adil Actal He started Murdered by My Father and in Sherwood and my favourite film ever, Four Lions. But he's performing at the moment in the estate at the National, which is a story about how you become the leader of the opposition.

12:18This is The News Agents. What joining us now is the actor Adil Akhtar who is performing right now at the National, the theatre in a play called The Estate, a brand new play and it pits a Sikh politician who is trying to be the opposition leader kind of the world of family and politics and religion I guess Adil, what drew you to it? Thank you, great question I can't laugh already, I haven't cracked a joke I would say ordinarily whenever I was looking at stories or plays stories on TV or film or theatre where there's an Asian protagonist that Asian protagonist usually has to go through some kind of hero's journey or overcome some sort of obstacle and that obstacle when they overcome it they then become this sort of moral arbiter or like some kind of mouthpiece for that that culture or that community of people and I love those stories because when you're sitting in an audience when you're sort of in the stories you hear the sort of the murmurs and the laughs of people who go oh that's I get that because they're sort of cultural references to things that you recognize and those stories are very important to do and I love being in the audience in those stories but when I read this script it seemed like what it was trying to do was turn that on its head where somebody starts off quite principled and simple and then he then moves through this story and something becomes more i heard this word problem problematized oh right and somebody becomes i mean to break this down just because it's sort of like to bring people in.

14:14No, no, no. What I was going to say is, and I'm going to be really blunt about this because this is what I do. You're not entirely nice as a character. It's not blunt. Right? It's true though, isn't it? Yeah, it's true, yeah. And when I was in the audience, I was hearing people willing you on to, as it were, do the right thing. And there were all these gasps because you're not entirely nice. So it's not like you're this, the martyr or the man who's overcome the difficulty of, you know, sort of white politics or whatever, right? Right. It's kind of quite nuanced. It's quite nuanced in the sense that this story is taking up a space where we are sitting in, you know, the character himself is at a crossroads of something.

14:59He's at a moral crossroads. And historically, when sort of plays are told, again, when there's a sort of Asian protagonist, it seems like it's the job of the play or the creatives or the playwright or the actor to find an answer or solution. And it's kind of nice that we're taking up the space now with these new waves of plays that are coming through and these more nuanced stories where it's really annoying, but where you present a problem. And I, you know, where you present a problem and you sit in that nuance and you sit in that problem because I sort of feel that's the only thing. I mean, the problem is that you are left the entire inheritance from your father.

15:41Right. And your sisters feel that this is misogynist. It's bad for the reputation of the religion. It's bad for your family. Yes. And you have to decide what to do. Right. With the money. Right. Essentially. Are you going to be the good guy? Are you going to be the fair guy? Or are you going to find a way? Yeah. Right. And in that, there's a sort of idea of sort of the narrativisation of yourself, which happens in politics all the time, doesn't it? So we sort of... We're telling the story of who I am. Right. So you present a story and the narrative and we all fall in love with that story. But then what it's really interrogating is the idea of...

16:20I think it's interrogating the idea of the perceived self on one side and the actual self. and when those two things undeniably smash together what happens and it's a really cynical way of looking at politics but I think in the story when that happens together with this character and he is presenting his true self in a way something clicks in in his brain and I think the politician sort of clicks in and he's like well I could use this I could use this for some political gain and that's a cynical way of looking at politics and you know politicians but you know it's sort of looking at the idea of of that and how opportunistic that is for some people where even when they're sort of presenting themselves you know in a very transparent way it's still used for some kind of political gain as opposed to what normal people do in the world which is going oh that's good I felt you know whole and complete for it for a time you use this word problematicized yeah did I get that right I don't know I've heard somebody told me that but you are no stranger to the problematic I'm thinking about the film four lions oh yeah which came out in 2010 I remember it very well because I went to see it on the night after the general election when I'd been up for 24 hours straight and I was so desperate to see it I was like I I just, I want to get the election out of the way and then I'm going to go and see this film.

17:52We've just marked 20 years since the 7-7 bombings, the bombings of London. And Four Lines is constructed around the idea of sort of laughably shit terrorists, of which you are one. And I'm just wondering how, when Chris Morris sort of came along and said, we're going to make a film about laughably shit terrorism. Like, what are you thinking? Are you thinking, why are you picking me? Or are you thinking, do I want to be so close to this? It's really edgy subject matter. I was sort of wondering whether it should be done or could be done. But then having gone through that process with Chris and sort of knowing him, I understand the importance of why you have to kind of be bold and be brave with telling those types of stories.

18:47And it just gives us that little bit of, that little bit of breath and that little bit of breathing space, you know, just to really understand the problem for what it is. You know, whether it's, you know... I mean, I was looking, you know, because we've been sort of thinking about the anniversary, I was looking back through what we now know about some of the bombers. Right. And the storylines are so closely sort of related to the film. And it was made only four and a half years afterwards. And I just thought, I'm really intrigued whether you, like, did you have a sort of like panic about it? Did you think this is going to go down, this is going to bomb?

19:29I mean, sorry, this is going to go down really badly. Yeah, I did a little bit. But then, like I said, when I was going through the process of it, I understood the importance of why this had to be told. And also the power of satire in, you know whether we're talking about the play that i've just been in or whether we're talking about you know four lines whatever the only thing that exercises your i think and i don't know this for sure but i think the only thing that exercises your empathy muscle well is to sit in the idea of nuance or sit in an idea of something being quite quite complicated to understand and it brings a sort of perspective on the subject matter that allows you to see it in a way i mean so for for lions i think for me after i went through that process and that and a lot of other people said that when they said when they watched the film it sort of took the teeth out of what the threat was it sort of put it into sharp focus what you should be threatened by and what you shouldn't be threatened by let's just play a little clip of you in that film Masha 'Allah, you're doing this, right, to save Brother Faisal.

20:44I know this comes as a bit of a shock to you, but everything will be all right. Yeah? OK. You see that over there? That, that's a sex shop, right? The US Embassy, or some other such lag utility. Right, now wait there. When I say, you fly to the target, when I die on this, you go to heaven, brother crow.

21:17Inshallah. This is you delivering a crow on a suicide mission. Sure. Was it fun to make? It was... I mean, I am still such a fan of Chris Morris. The whole thing went by in a bit of a fever dream. I just wanted to make sure I was doing the best job that I could. but there's some bits that you're doing which is just like... So I don't know if people remember when I was in the garage scene and I was using all the different accents. Yeah, exactly. With the peroxide, buying the peroxide. And one of them's... Well, it's my voice. Right. Can I have 12 bottles of bleach please? Yeah, I know what that sounds like.

21:59Give me another one. IRA voice. IRA voice? They're terrorists, Faisal. Why do you want to do a terrorist voice? You'll get us nicked. I'll be disguised, though, won't I? Yeah, but as a terrorist. Let's hear the voice.

22:19Can I have 12 bottles of bleach, please? And then I've got one like this as well. Can I have 12 bottles of bleach, please? What's that? It's a woman's voice, because I've got the... got loads of liquid peroxide and she probably thought that he would go in there and what dye her hair or something and i i was actually trying to do different accents and it was like don't do it but i was trying to but but then chris from behind the camera was like don't do different accents just keep the accents the same so it was like this strange thing of like the direction was do different accents but don't do different accents and so when you see my face it's just fresh from that direction that piece of direction so I'm kind of lost to myself trying to say the thing which is just super funny but what it does is it also allows the tragedy to enter in a little bit when you really see at the time who we were really scared of and what we were scared of was like these bunch of young men, disillusioned young men who had a misdirected, I don't know, like creative energy or something.

23:31You know, they were just, it's all things to me when I listen to it. I think it's funny, but I also hear the tragedy in it as well. Did you sympathise? I mean, did you end up sympathising with the character? I think it's just whenever you get a bunch of boys together and they're trying to organise anything, it doesn't matter who they are, it's going to turn into a shit show. do you know what I mean and that's what I took away from it and that when you think when you look at it from the perspective of like homegrown terrorism is funny and tragic you know what do you think our relationship is now I mean with I guess we're sort of starting to see so much about you know the kind of whether the social fabric is ripping whether we're kind of becoming a different country whether you know england has lost its way i mean do you do you sort of look at any of that and think i don't understand what's going on here or do you look at it and think i've got to stand up and say something or yeah i don't know it's a weird one so when i was i was listening to this thing recently and they were talking about three sort of human drives there's like the egoic drive which sometimes comes through in sort of public policy and stuff but it's like get as much as you can as quickly as you want as quickly as you can and this altruistic thing which is like this offer of saintlyhood or something where you have to look the thing that you need to be is perfect and it's over there but it's kind of unattainable and the people who present that sort of know it's unattainable and there's this third one which is this reciprocity thing which is doesn't get much press because it's not very it's not very sexy you know just people reciprocally exchanging sort of being nice to each other and i just look out in the world i think that the reciprocity thing is happening more often than it's not.

25:18It's just if we notice it. You mean the good stuff? I think so. I live in Camberwell and I walk past East Street Market and I see the mix of cultures and people who own market stores who have been there for generations and people who have just opened up market stores who are from other countries. I just walk down the street and I go, well, it's happening more often than it's not. And if we don't believe it, then if we don't believe that, then we're sort of, I don't know, I just believe that it is. I think we, I just see people getting on more often than they don't. But when you sort of open up the papers or read the news, you're like, oh, God, we're in this sort of, you know, I don't know.

26:04I just, that's what I see. And that's what I sort of choose to sort of make more important than anything else. And Adil, before we go, I mean, I sort of, I came to understand a story about how you got into acting. Yeah. From an old teacher of yours. Yes. His name is Marco Liviero, in case he's listening. And he, he described how you were sort of thinking of, you felt like you had to follow a very different trajectory in your career. Yeah. You had to follow, I'm just interested to hear what happened there. Yeah. Because you were sort of brought up in a fairly socially conservative home. Yeah, sort of.

26:43I mean, I don't think that my parents would have seen themselves as being sort of conservative. I think, you know, they sort of seen themselves as being quite moderate. But then, you know, I was, you know, my dad sort of gently pushed me, stroke, sort of told me that I was going to do a law degree, which is sort of, you know, I just remember at the time going, well, that's what you sort of do. You listen to what your dad tells you to do. and I did a law degree but I always wanted to sort of always wanted to be an actor and Marco was the first person and we were talking about it just before we got on air now which I was reading Merchant of Venice and there was a monologue from Shylock that I auditioned with at National Youth Theatre and going to National Youth Theatre so that sort of started the acting sort of journey for me yeah and I suppose looking back on it and my dad now I've got an eight and a six year old I understand the pressures that are on a parent a difficulty with you and your parents at the start it did but now it's sort of um i understand why why my dad wanted to you know he he's he came from pakistan himself so and he came he came to the uk and he struggled and it was really difficult for him so he just wanted to make sure that i wasn't going to go through any sort of just wanted the best life for me i suppose so that's how he thought he could do it just by sort of making sure that i was some kind of professional but now like I said I'm a dad myself and got an eight and a six year old and I get that I get why you want to Would you put your kids off being an actor?

28:17I think I'm just you know whatever makes them happy really I think I just sort of make the space give them the space to sort of discover who they are look out for the clues and sort of empower them to be who they can be I think is the way I want a parent I'd like to. Lovely to talk to you. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Cheers.

28:46This is The News Agents. They make your butt look amazing. Sydney Sweeney's new jeans campaign is sparking major backlash. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour. My jeans are blue. The campaign has a clever slogan. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans. Well, it's not that clever a slogan. It's a real dad joke at the heart of it, which is... Yeah, I appreciated it. Yeah, exactly. One for you, John Sopel. It's jeans versus jeans, which is one my own dear dad has made about 3 ,000 times. Yeah. But the point about this advert starring Sydney Sweeney, who is, am I allowed to say, very hot, but also blue-eyed and blonde-haired and white-skinned, is that it has sparked something of a backlash amongst people who say, how tone-deaf are you in this day and age, with all the race-baiting and the sort of white nationalist chat that goes on, to do something that talks about genetics?

29:54Like, how thick-skinned can you be? Yes, it sounds like eugenics or something like that, that we're talking about the master race of these people with you know as you say white skin blonde hair blue eyes you know the very picture of a good Aryan Nazi look advertising is done to provoke to get conversations going to catch attention and in that way I'm sure the advertising company thinks boom thrilled job done can I ask you did it strike you did it strike you as awkward when you saw the ad or did you see the controversy before you saw the ad? I think I didn't see the controversy immediately, although I sort of, there is something uncomfortable.

30:37Spoiler alert, I have whitish skin. I do not have blonde hair and I do not have blue eyes. And I just think that idea that the perfection is white skin, blue eyes. And that's interesting. So you did feel slightly... Yeah, a tiny bit. I just think that those sort of pictures, I always think that if you're a person of colour But on the one thing that is presented as perfection is, you know, white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. It must be a pretty uncomfortable place to be. And so in that sense, I think it's when you look at the way advertising has changed that, you know, you now have black role models, whereas before you never saw anyone who was black who was in TV advertising.

31:16I mean, I'm going back a couple of decades. Now you do. You see gay couples depicted in advertising, which you would have never done, you know, 30 years ago. it has made a lot of progress and there's something just a bit i suppose the interesting thing is like i mean i guess i'm thinking is this kind of all confected fundamentally yeah you talk about advertising having changed but basically she's a very pretty woman advertising designer clothes like this is not a million miles away from anything we've seen and so i guess my question is is it striking more of a chord now because of the age in which we live?

31:54I actually think this advert would have been fine 10 years ago. I think it would have been nothing but a bad dad joke. Whereas now, everything that you kind of see on X and everything that feels more aggressively sort of nationalist is actually what is making us think in this way about this particular advert. Whereas a few years ago, I don't think it would have even turned my head. Would you have had an advert with a black woman talking about her perfect genes? Yes. Yeah? But there wasn't. Yes, but there wasn't. I mean, if that had been Beyonce advertising perfect genes, I think we would all have understood she is a role model of female perfection.