Civil Servants Triggered by British Flag & Is Trump Getting Impeached - Off The Fence

29:36Tom Slater:And so the point that we came away with was that effectively kind of what you're saying is that the asymmetrical nature of the levers of power in this situation favors Iran in such a way that there is only really one way out. And that way out is for Trump to take the l while pretending it's a w and that is effectively why this war hasn't ended so far because they haven't found a way to do that that's kind of the perspective that we came away with which is why we've always been rather concerned about how this war would go and by the way in the meantime the entire world is suffering the economic consequences however the eye of

30:14Winston Marshall:Pollock did talk a lot of shit, which is the other side of the ledger. There's been all kinds of arguments for and against the Iran war, the nuclear capability, kind of civilizational argument. I haven't quite articulated as well the kind of chat shit, get banged argument, as the kids were saying here. Not to be up on Winston, which I fear I'm in danger of doing. But I think that was always the issue, wasn't there? There was so clearly a case to be made that the Islamic Republic was a malign force, not just in its near abroad but the world over the way in which it's been targeting its people in the diaspora the way in which it's been targeting people in britain the way in which you know everything from the fatwa onwards you could say that this was not just a country that was going down its own islamist path it had these kind of bigger like imperial designs on the world and that needed to be checked at some point the idea of ever getting its hands on a nuclear weapon given the apocalyptic ideology that at least the very top tier of the kind of clerical regime they absolutely believe in.

31:14Winston Marshall:It's a horror story. No, I just want to see whether or not this conflict was going to actually deliver on those stated aims. I mean, there was a reason that even the neocons and the interventionists in the George W. Bush years and so on didn't go near this because it was always bound to make Iraq look like a tea party. Not least, and also pile on top of that the fact that it's clear that because of the American weariness with foreign conflicts and so on, the hesitancy to kind of properly go to war as it were rather than just kind of focusing on we've now flipped from an air war to kind of economic pressure and economic sanctions meant that you were it just created a situation which um was probably beneficial if not to the iranian people and certainly the irgc which is that they just have to survive this war to win it and they could emerge out of it as it seems to have been the case with the straight up or moves with that ability and proven track record of being able to menace the global economy, menace their near neighbours, just by the threat of being able to lob weaponry and missiles and what have you into the strait.

32:17Winston Marshall:So it's one of those things where this was always going to be hung around Trump's neck. It was always going to be the most significant thing he did over his two terms. The question was whether or not it was an albatross or a medal. At the moment, it seems like it's more going to be an albatross, certainly when you look at those midterm bombs. And look, long term, can I just make this one point, Winston? because I think if we look at the long term for this conflict, the longer it goes on, the longer the straight-over move does the hokey-cokey, opens and it shuts, and it opens and it shuts, and it opens and it shuts, the further we go down this path is the closer we get to a real economic catastrophe.

32:54Winston Marshall:This could be catastrophic to numerous economies, potentially potentially devastating taking years and years and years to recover from and the fact that it we haven't seemed to have had yet anybody proposing a solution or potential solution to actually solving this i find utterly terrifying if i'm being honest because we look at the depths of our economies. The UK is 2.9 trillion. The US is 40 trillion. I mean, we are not healthy economies just by looking at our deficits. All we need is the slightest push towards the precipice. And we're all going to be in desperate trouble. And my real concern is, is that the current crisis with Iran and the straight off will move is the nudge that our economies need into going into freefall?

33:54Winston Marshall:Before pushing back, I'll just make paint the picture. The things that are actually even worse still, which is that the Iranians... I thought you were pro the war, mate. The Iranians are even... It looks like that they're going to be... The new regime will be more hardline, which I think you did predict. The viziers around the new, the sort of younger gayer Ayatollah apparently are more hardline. And it's also the case that America's allies in the Middle East have lost confidence in America. So the Saudis, their bases were destroyed. The American bases in Saudi were destroyed. The Emiratis had these deals with the Americans, and yet they still got, it didn't act as a defense having an American alliance.

34:41Winston Marshall:In fact, it meant that they were subject of the bombings from Iran. But to you, the question's got to be, what do you do with an Iran, with a death cult Iran, with enriched uranium?

34:57Tom Slater:Perfect. I was going to bring this up. Perfect. I'm glad you bring this up. This is exactly the counter argument.

35:03Winston Marshall:Great. You actually have to come up with a good answer. and the situation before the war...

35:09Tom Slater:No, you don't actually, for the reasons I'm happy to explain. You don't actually. But may I?

35:15Winston Marshall:The situation before the war was not tolerable. The terms of the JCPOA were only good for Iran. Iran was a menace and a threat to the world and it was not acceptable to leave the situation as it was. We can't have ayatollahs with nuclear weapons.

35:36Tom Slater:Agreed. The problem with your argument, Winston, is that this war makes it far, far more likely that the Ayatollahs will get nuclear weapons. And the deal that Trump or whoever replaces him, if that's how long this war goes, does, will actually be worse than the JCPOA. Necessarily so, because by that point, America will have definitely lost the war. Well, the MOU is worse than the JCPOA. as far as my my my point is that well exactly you're making my point for me except that the longer this war goes the worse the deal will be which is why i said trump's only way out of this is to get a take an l and sell it as a w and that's the only outcome so you can't put this on us and say well you guys don't didn't support this war so what would you have done about iran's nuclear threat well this war has only made that worse and more likely so that's why for example i had not only no problem i was delighted that the united states tried to take out iran's nuclear facilities in the 12 day war bombed the shit out of their nuclear installations all day every day twice a week you know twice twice a day whatever i don't care that's fine by me the issue i have is Once you escalate it in the way that you have, we've actually now made it far more likely that the Iranians will develop nuclear weapons.

37:03Tom Slater:So do I have a solution sitting here in the podcast studio to the Iran nuclear problem? No, I don't. I don't think anybody does. The only argument is, was this war something that took us further away from that solution or closer to it? And I think my argument would be that it's actually taken us further away. It's made Iran's nuclear ambitions more real, more likely to be capitalized on. And Iran is more going to be, if you put yourself in the position of the Ayatollah, despite his alleged homosexuality, Winston, then what you might say is, what is the rationale for me now not to go for nuclear weapons?

37:45Tom Slater:We were sort of playing footsie with nuclear material. We weren't quite going for it. We were just enriching a little bit. we didn't put it into missiles no no no well you've just killed my dad you've killed all all my mates right you've shown that you will keep killing us the what's the solution to all of this from my ayatollah perspective well my ayatollah perspective is the only way for me to be safe is to do what north korea did there's a reason we're not bombing the out of north korea that's because they have nuclear weapons there's a reason ukraine was able to be invaded by russia it's because they didn't have nuclear weapons which we made them give up by the way it's one the things bill clinton has actually publicly conceded that forcing the ukrainians to give up their nukes is one of the reasons russia was able to invade so if you're the ayatollah you are now way more determined and way more legitimized in the eyes of your own but also lots of people around the world who don't support this war to go for nukes so you can't put that on the critics of the war because the war has not advanced the cause that you think it has but i think it's

38:50Winston Marshall:perfectly reasonable to have a conversation about how to deal with that problem which is of course you you i think you guys might be an exception in the anti-iran war crowd in that you're prepared to have that conversation a lot of people just say everything america does is wrong they would not have supported or admit that hammer to be more specific they would not have supported they don't support what happened in venezuela whereas you guys don't have a de facto to a position like that either America is bad or that war is necessarily bad because there are worse things than war. I agree. And that is something that definitely needs to be called out.

39:27Winston Marshall:The desire for America or just the West to lose this conflict is a really concerning tendency that you see more and more across society now. And it's one of those things where it's quite clear that when a country like Iran funds proxies, menaces its near abroad, has an outsized role in the continuing kind of destabilization of a country like Iraq or whatever that's just Iran doing its thing but when you've got the US or Israel whoever actually trying to protect against their own interests or trying to deal with a theocratic Islamist threat that doesn't just kill its own people but also has designs on the world that's just American imperialism and something to be opposed to the hilt so there is that of course complete double standard and and the the willingness for America to be given a bloody nose even at what consequences has been pretty striking.

40:15Winston Marshall:The thing that struck me about this whole conflict from the off though was that even if you're kind of like paid up supporter of like the American empire, even if you think on balance it's a better thing than not, that it continues to be that hegemonic power. I mean even on the most basic level, forget nuclear proliferation, but keeping the shipping lanes open, that was like the least controversial aspect of the American empire and it was always based not just on kind of sheer military might but kind of implicit threat. There are limits to American power. It cannot, you know, just by sheer warfare, get certain miscreant countries into line, if you like.

40:50Winston Marshall:The problem with this conflict, certainly the way it's panned out, is that it's demonstrated those limits. And it's also given a country like Iran, that boot on the neck of global hydrocarbons in a way that it wouldn't have had previously, because again, the implicit threat has been sort of called out, and it hasn't, hasn't worked. So there, of course, is the ridiculous sort of anti Western, supposedly anti imperious left opposition to any kind of conflict it seems like that might benefit the west in its interest but even amongst those people i think are in who would support you know america continuing to be the superpower riding high this is only weak in that position certainly in the way it's been prosecuted so and we also need to so i was just going to say look america has a democracy every four years as an election.

41:36Winston Marshall:If this drags on, what's the next government going to do? I mean, if we have a democratic government, what are they going to do? I can tell you right now, I mean, I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on US politics, but I don't think that they're going to be as hard line as Trump has been. And the real worry is that they're going to capitulate and they're going to give the Iranians a very, very soft, very, very favorable deal, which then incentivizes these types of countries to do these types of behaviors. It's a real worry. And even if you we get somebody in, we get, for instance, somebody from the Republican Party winning the election, what's their position going to be?

42:18Winston Marshall:Are they going to be a fundamentally anti-war, anti-interventionist party who are going to go, you know what, we don't want anything to do with this. It's nothing to do with us. Here, have it. And we're just going to go back and not get involved. And there's plenty of people who share that view, but in America, on the left and on the right. So this idea that this is a continuum that we can maintain, unfortunately, it's simply not going to happen. And it's really worrying.

42:51Winston Marshall:The other part of this story, just to bring it back to our home, is that this week we had a cyber attack from Iran of a power facility and it didn't affect the grid but we have been attacked and our response as far as unless there's something happening behind the scenes that we don't know about is that there hasn't been a response and I think zero response is also not acceptable what we have in our capabilities given our military assets or whatever it might be, it's not entirely clear to me because obviously the government knows more than we know that it's not in the public domain. But to do nothing is also not an option as far as I'm concerned.

43:37Tom Slater:Yeah, no, I agree. I think Tom made a very good point, which is you don't have to be anti-Western to be against this conflict. And in fact, I would argue, you know, my view has always been the same. Pax Americana is the best Pax there's ever been. It's wonderful. I'd like it to continue i'm very pro-america very pro-west and because of that very against this conflict because empires and america is an empire often achieve great success by conflict by using their force the the threats that you alluded to tom but they can also get into bad wars that cause them to go bankrupt that cause internal instability and that can cause a weakening of the image abroad and by the way there's so many conflicts you can be party to in the world all at once and losing at the same time.

44:24Tom Slater:I mean, let's be honest. America is the chief backer of the Ukrainians. Ukraine is not winning that war, partly because the West failed to provide them the support they needed to be able to do that. So you've got two conflicts going on at the same time, both of which America, you might say, is not winning, to put it gently. And on top of that, of course, you have China, which has its interests in Taiwan and elsewhere, and other countries around the world, which may be looking and going, well, this may be the time to challenge Western hegemony in our region, whatever region that may be. So from that perspective, I think you can be incredibly pro-Western and pro-America and because of that oppose this conflict.

45:06Tom Slater:But it's great that we had this discussion. Speaking of hating the West, Cambridge, that wonderful institution that's been rather in the news quite a bit lately, And perhaps we'll touch on our interview with Nathan Kofnes, who, of course, helped to expose Jason Arde, who was formerly at Cambridge. Cambridge has been in the news this week because they have hired. Let me just triple check correctly. Yes, there we go. Assistant Research Professor Farah Ahmed, who used to be a member of Hizb ut-Taria, which has now been banned as a terrorist organization. uh who now to be fair to her I will say this she did write all of this in 2002 so it was a very long time ago and look let's be honest we were all a bit if you don't believe in holy war in your 20s are you really you know it's that famous Churchill saying but you have no heart you have no heart I mean if you don't but she did say in 2002 in the Hizbiteria it was a good line it was a good line i'm pleased with it but anyway uh she was basically a member of what is now a terrorist organization to be fair to her it was not at the time but she did talk about the fact that basically muslims need to study engineering so they can further the jihad and and allow islam to dominate um and they've just hired her do we know if she's really radically changed her views or is this just the new policy at cambridge exactly maybe they hired

46:39Winston Marshall:her for that reason uh yeah the current evidence would suggest so i mean she claims that she she no longer agrees with everything that his but today said which is uh not the biggest reassurance is it not least because in that particular pamphlet which she co-authored where a lot of these quotes have been drawn from from andrew gilligan's reporting in the spectator over recent weeks that line about jihad is fascinating because basically says and you know considering the fact that education is her field that essentially the only reason to study something like engineering or computer science is the furtherance of jihad and explicitly mentions weaponry so there's no you know even attempt to deflect and suggest what she's talking about here is an inner spiritual struggle this is the full fat militaristic jihad which at one point at least in time she absolutely endorsed.

47:30Winston Marshall:Given the fact that Hizbett Tahrir is now a prescribed extremist group, she couldn't legally express support for that organisation anyway at this point, certainly wouldn't be advised to or well advised to. But the things that she's done since kind of holding conferences or being involved in projects at Cambridge would suggest at the very least there's some resonances with her old, slightly more Islamist adjacent self. There was a project she was involved with at Cambridge recently, which was promoting kind of school materials to 12-year-olds, asking them to think about the Israel-Palestine question, describe the hostages as prisoners of war, and encourage the kids in some of the kind of sample questions to think about the martyrdom of the children in Gaza, which I think would, says a lot about where she's coming from, shall we say.

48:17Winston Marshall:This whole story, I mean, we've taken to calling elite universities like woke madrassas. I think Cambridge have taken that far too literally.

48:23Tom Slater:In this case, it seems like what ended up with, certainly with the Faculty of Education.

48:32Winston Marshall:I think we're actually being a little bit too lenient on her here, and by extension Cambridge, because yes, Huzbeth Tariya was only prescribed a year or two ago. It was still an Islamist organisation. It was still a jihadi organisation 20 years ago when she was saying this stuff and she was a part of it. And Cambridge thought they can't have not seen that. I mean, Cambridge employed her. And by the way, she's in the same department as Jason Arde. So, I mean, think about that. You go to Cambridge, you go to the morning with Jason Arde where you're learning about, I don't know what sort of woke nonsense and then jihadi lessons in the afternoon.

49:16Winston Marshall:That's a really crazy thing that's going on here that this is off the back of that, literally the same department. It's the Islamist green alliance, I guess. We're seeing it now deep in our universities. To be honest with you, it sounds a lot better than some of the schools I taught in, but let's not focus on that. Were you a teacher, Francis?

49:42Winston Marshall:But I think the fact that this was in the Department of Education makes this even more sinister. This is a department that trains teachers. Cambridge is the most prestigious place in the country to go and do your teaching qualification. And if you go to Cambridge and you get trained to be a teacher, you are seen as the best of the best. And then you look at these professors who are actually teaching, the teachers who are going to teach our children. and then you look at our schools and you look at what is happening, then you think, well, no wonder we're in the situation that we're in when this is what we've produced, number one.

50:26Winston Marshall:And number two, here's an interesting little thought experiment to play. Imagine somebody rocked up at Cambridge as a professor, looking a bit like me, sounding a bit like me, and then going, yeah, you know what? Pro-reform, everybody. Let's talk about immigration. Let's talk about all of that good stuff. how long do you think i would last there i give it about 12 and a half minutes

50:49Tom Slater:mate if you turned up at cambridge looking and sounding the way you do they'd be oh thank god the plum is here but but you make a good a very good point actually and this is something that particularly since i became a father and especially since i went to visit katherine burblesing school michaela and and had the opportunity to see that and also talk to her she really really showed me and kind of got me to really see what the importance of the point francis just made people find education a very boring subject but these are literally the people who are training the people who teach your children is it then a surprise that your children become that there's that super famous meme of you know people before and after different drugs before and after alcohol before and after heroin and the last one is college or university and uh i think we we we obviously we joke about it because that's what we do but the education system is absolutely riddled and rife with all of this crap and it needs to be stripped from it uh there needs to be comprehensive reform and by the way you know we need more people like nathan kofnas coming out and exposing this stuff and exposing and andrew gilligan who covered this story this stuff has to be exposed the attention has to be brought to it in order that there is the rationale and the motivation to deal with it and should there ever be a government that is actually actively hostile to it they need to come in and find a way to basically burn all the out from the entire education system because you know like i say we joke and laugh and whatever but this is literally the children of everyone watching this being taught by people who actively hate everything about our society and want to destroy it and that's why they want to teach engineering

52:47Winston Marshall:and look here i'm going to tell you right now as somebody who is bit who is who was trained in one these institutions. I trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Now, when you handed in essays, I remember handing in an essay, but I've always been a wind up and I've always been a bit of a prick, surprise, surprise, and that we had to do an essay and about education systems or whatever else. And I handed in an essay on the case for grammar schools, right? They put a line through the paper with the and just put the word no wow right a line through the paper and the word no because and very it's very funny on one level of course it's hilarious but on another level what does that what does that tell you what that tells you is they will not accept any type of thought inquiry or argument that strays from their own ideology and if you do do that they're not going to engage with it they're not going to push back they're not going to say well how about this how about that you are going to get a literal pen through the paper and the word no and and looking at what their ideology is is also even more terrifying because in the kind of combination of your sort of Jason Arday style critical race theory and your Farrah Ahmed Islamist adjacent views on education.

54:15Winston Marshall:You see a view on education, which is completely antithetical to our entire tradition of education. I mean, one of these conferences that Ms. Ahmed was holding was about challenging science because it's colonial and because it is making claims to objectivity that might not be the case. It's so fascinating that in the kind of Islamist politics as well as the woke politics you see this kind of shared complete flat out rejection of kind of pursuit of truth of knowledge for its own sake everything is just to the ends of either social justice or the caliphate presumably um and and how can you have that at the heart of institutions which are supposedly devoted to precisely those old liberal enlightenment values it's just i don't see how those things are going to mix it's not even just that they reject certain political persuasions although they absolutely do like the whole edifice is something that they just don't accept and yet they're going along doing that you know teaching the next generations of not just teachers but people are going to leave the country something that um as you say we're only really at the beginning of getting to grips with i guess and trying to solve this problem sorry no no winston go for it and i'll make the i'll make a point at the end trying to solve this problem problem as Constantine lays out to me is not so clear so gut it all out try and get rid of it and I have actually been thinking about this because someone like Catherine Berbalsing who runs her school in North London she is actually hated by the teachers across the country she's hated by the National Teachers Union she is enemy number one and she's quite lonely I think in you know she's got people around her but it's not like there are Michaela schools up and down the country and the problem you've got I think Constantine is that if you've got all of these people out and they are actually the majority of teachers you then have a situation where you don't have teachers and you've got an education system that you've got to continue maintaining so yeah it trying to devise a way in which those teachers are kept on board but deprogrammed somehow or shown the light or guided in a way that it's taken away from this anti-British as you explored it in some cases slightly pro-Islamist and by the way pro-Islamist I mean it's you remember the Batley Grammar School teacher who's still in hiding the cartoon of Mohammed up in Yorkshire it's not actually that Islamism isn't in the schools that there's some suggestion it is but uh to actually gut this all out and maintain an education system it's not a clear uh pro it's not a clear how we do that i don't know if you've got ideas

56:59Tom Slater:to that but yeah i'm going to sound very russian in answering this uh but i mean the the way that the direction of societies is typically changed has very little to do with the broad mass of the people it's about infighting within the elite circles and ultimately within the education system the like within any system the overwhelming mass of people is rather bovine these are people who will go along with whatever it is the herd is doing at the time so what we're talking about is who is in charge what their agenda is and what the explicit do's and don'ts and the implicit do's and don'ts of that society that structure that institution those uh that community is so if you change the overall setting and posture of an institution most of the people will fall in line and the ones that don't have to be the heads on spikes that you use as the example of ever for everybody else if you want to teach jihadism in our university you get fired simple right this is not compatible as tom was saying with the western uh liberal educational tradition by the way we've got to you got to start with what is education for we've got to the point i think in the west where we sort of think that education is about teaching science and maths and whatever education is about that it's about teaching information it's about teaching ways of thinking etc but it's also about passing down the cultural traditions of that society that's what it's about and unless education does that then education will inevitably be taken people over by people who will teach the cultural traditions of a different society and so these indigenous ways of knowing and critical race theory and whatever that's not just people coming in and taking over it's people filling a vacuum when people step back and say we're no longer going to teach the western canon we're not longer going to teach the western liberal values then of course other forms of thinking and being will be taught instead and so that's why i say you have to restructure the whole thing up but that doesn't mean you have to fire every single teacher who currently would respond in an anonymous survey saying actually i do support a bit of critical race theory that's not how it works the majority of people as we have seen in the last 10 years will go along with almost anything as long as the social incentive structure is for them to do that and look most

59:24Winston Marshall:Most people, if you actually ask them, and I include teachers in this, and teaching is a notoriously difficult job. If you ask most teachers, even very, very bright ones, what critical race theory is, most of them wouldn't even be able to tell you or explain to you because there's simply not enough time in the day to plan your lessons, teach the classes, mark the books, attend all the pointless meetings, do all the pointless paperwork, and then dive into critical race theory and what it is and the tenants. Yeah, but there's a point that I want to make here, which is really important. I don't think we've spoken enough about the fact that this is Cambridge University.

1:00:04Winston Marshall:This isn't London South Bank University. This isn't, you know, whatever Nottingham Trent or whatever. Sorry, Dean, you went to Nottingham Trent, our producer, my apologies. But this isn't a university mid-ranking. Yeah, Dean's going to quit now. I can just hear him on the other end.

1:00:22Tom Slater:No, no, he's not going to quit. He went to Nottingham Trent. This is the best job he's ever going to get, mate. Yeah, that is true.

1:00:28Winston Marshall:Dean, Dean, you've got this job and you're fucking grateful for it. All right, mate? No. But the point is, is this is the premier academic institution of this country. When we were doing our A-levels, we all dreamt about going to this university. This is the academic equivalent of playing in the Premier League. Now, just imagine if you're a footballer and you're looking at the Premier League and it's completely corrupt. The matches don't mean anything. Everything's a farce and a sham and it's completely rotten from the inside. What does that say about you? What does that say about your career, your dreams, your aspirations?

1:01:06Winston Marshall:And what do you do in order to succeed? Do you stand out and sacrifice everything that you've worked for in order to essentially get ahead? or do you basically take a stand and sacrifice your career and everything you've worked for? I mean, what do you do? This is a tragedy. Yeah, I just think as to your point about teachers not being able to spell out critical race theory, I'm sure it's right. Most people can't spell out critical race theory who are woke, but they are still woke and they still have that worldview. view and as for them uh sort of gutting them out if you were to change even not trying to sack everyone but just try and change the the curriculum and try and change how education is done in our country I think there'd be a revolt I think a lot of teachers would protest that as they have done before so that that's why I just I don't I'm not convinced that it's as I mean we'll see what happens if if there can be any change from the top but i'm not convinced there'll be an easy process

1:02:09Tom Slater:in no i don't i don't think no no i don't think anyone's saying it will be easy and by the way the answer to all of this is politics right let's be honest the answer to all of this is people being elected who actively a understand this problem and be opposed what's been happening and there are lots of people within academia who would be prepared to facilitate the changes that are necessary if there was the political will and the political cover to actually go ahead with this so it starts with i mean this ultimately is about politics and unless we have uh a change not just of government because a lot of this was happening under the tories but a change of the world view of the people who run the country from the very top down uh this won't change and that's why you You have to have election results that deliver a sound majority and a clear mandate for this to be reformed.

1:03:05Winston Marshall:Seeing as we've brought up the topic of what ideas are compatible with Western liberal ideas, I just thought I might do a little plug for my upcoming live event in London at the Emanuel Centre, September 11th, Majid Nawaz and Raymond Ibrahim, friends of Trigonometry, I think as much as my show, is Islam compatible with the West. Lads, I hope you'll join me. I hope you'll see you there. And if you want tickets, it's winstonmarshall.eventbrite.co.uk.

1:03:39Tom Slater:Excellent. Well, on that happy note, let's move on to our final story of the week, which is, of course, Meta, the owner of Facebook. Did I get away with that bug? you just did mate uh meta has agreed meta has agreed to pay up to 18 billion dollars to settle claims uh that its platforms have harmed children uh this of course is to do with uh a number of different uh claims against meta up to and including children who have committed suicide as a result of the of the content that they've watched and there are really well there many sides to the story but it is uh you know i don't even know why i said that there are so many sides to this story actually it's a very complicated issue to to talk about um so let's get into it tom what are your thoughts on this idea of social media companies now meta i think has admitted no fault but you don't pay 18 billion dollars if if there's no no fire to the smoke right um so i think there's an acknowledgement that at least i don't know about now but at least in the past there has been this uber wild wild west of social media the move fast and break things ideology of these companies where they really i don't think understood the sorts of impact that their platforms would be having on the world you know down from little kids being affected by it through to civil war and in in the third world because people are getting ramped up over uh different

1:05:10Winston Marshall:things so what do we think about this it's really complicated as you say i mean the fact that meta have admitted no fault is a bit like um you know prince andrew paying all that money to virginia jufrae out of court somebody claimed to have never met but uh it's uh it's it's one it's a fascinating development i suppose one of the things is that it's so clear that despite all the conversations just by the buyer that we have in the UK about trying to regulate big tech, trying to change the behaviors of these enormous Silicon Valley giants, that really it comes down to American regulation and American litigation, which will affect how these platforms operate, not just in the US, but across the world.

1:05:50Winston Marshall:Basically, that was always going to be, you know, the censorship controls got rolled back when these companies changed hands in America or when the Trump went back to the White House. and it was clear and the message was sent to these companies that they needed to play ball on say censorship and roll that back otherwise they weren't necessarily going to be in as hospitable a climate so it comes down as ever to what goes on in america i think the difficult thing with the whole social media what impact is it having on society the youth and what have you is that there are clear ways in which it has affected that everyone can see it in their lives the way in which it's encouraged a kind of unsociability screen time just the way in which people in their own social media usage, let alone just talking about kids, regret the amount of time they spend on it, attention spans, what have you.

1:06:38Winston Marshall:Where I think the ground is not actually as firm is the idea that it's having this drastic, deleterious effect on mental health, for instance. Because even if you look at a lot of the research that is supposedly there for that, it's quite small and not particularly well measurable. There's a big issue with trying to demonstrate causation over correlation. You know, there are quite struggling, a lot of struggling teenagers, shall we say, out there who happen to use social media a lot. But that's not because the social media is the problem necessarily, even if it might add to it. So I do think we need to be a little bit careful about having a kind of moral panic about technology in the same way that we might have had about television or whatever in eras previously.

1:07:23Winston Marshall:But clearly it is having an impact. If it didn't, then it wouldn't be such a successful product. And in the same way that when something like the printing press came along, we all think about the positives now in terms of literacy and the spreading of the written word and whatever, but it was also genuinely destabilising in a lot of ways, politically and otherwise. So I guess we're just starting to get to grits with this. The one thing I worry about slightly is the assumption that social media is just single-handedly rotting everyone's brains. I think there's probably a lot more blame to go around and it might not be quite as catastrophic as some people are making up.

1:07:57Winston Marshall:I think it's very apt that you make the reference to the Andrew formerly known as Prince here because I think Meta have pulled an absolute blinder in this case. The reason they settled is because there was a whistleblower who revealed that they had a policy of don't ask, don't tell when it came to harm done to children. And so they got done, and this is really key, I think, for another sort of part of this story is this is a civil case, not a federal criminal case. And so that's important with regards to free speech in the First Amendment, which we can come to. But they have avoided what they metaphor could have cost them$1.4 trillion and that the states making the case against them could have cost$200 billion.

1:08:49Winston Marshall:So they've settled for$17 billion, but actually it's only about 12 billion the extra 5 billion comes if the states and this is the genius of whoever is representing meta they have got it so that the states are now incentivized to go after tiktok youtube and snap to get a similar deal and if they can get them they'll get more money those are the companies that have to pay more money and the new regulations on social media use for minors will be even harsher than what meta have agreed to but basically the story is that meta have knowingly been created uh using addictive methods uh knowing it was doing harm for for children for years and they're not that that it's a light punishment but it's worse than that if you read the meta statement that they put out which i've i've pinged over as an asset for us to read because it is kind of gross but they they've spun the whole thing to turn themselves into the good guys so they do this open letter letter to TikTok and YouTube to join us to join us in supporting teens we are announcing an agreement we have reached with a bipartisan group of 52 attorney generals across the states territories and building uh long-standing efforts to empower parents and support teens.

1:10:14Winston Marshall:I mean the whole thing they've turned they've spun the whole thing to so that they're the good guys when they they have very much been the villains in this story all along and it's a big deal about censorship and we have to talk about what's going on in Britain which is that not only for the online safety act which was also started by the way because of young girl called Molly Howard who committed suicide and ended up being passed by the Tory government and then Kisama's added to it and banned social media use for under-sixteens but as with the case in Meta and here in Britain what it actually means is that all of us not just miners need some sort of digital ID some sort of verification to use the internet to use YouTube to use all of these other social media platforms YouTube by the way which is the number one search engine not just a social media platform but categorized as a social media platform what that means is they those companies now have the power if they want to shut individuals out so what we saw revealed in the Twitter files that slack channels of the government the American government the the White House approaching Twitter, as it was called then, saying, can you push down, hide this Hunter, close down this Hunter Biden story?

1:11:40Winston Marshall:Everything we saw through COVID about censoring individuals. Now, not just in Britain, we're already there. The Americans, that's exactly what's happening now. So the America, the Internet will no longer be a free place. And maybe 10 years ago, it would have been taking quite a lot of imagination to think, oh, I'm not going to get banned or blocked from the Internet. But now, after everything we've gone through over the last five years, this is a serious threat and a serious blow, I think, to American freedoms. We also have to take, and it's a great point you're making there, Winston, we also have to take into consideration, you know, the effect that this is having on kids.

1:12:22Winston Marshall:I mean, I remember when we interviewed Jonathan Haidt, I think it was around a year ago, and he said this is one of the greatest acts of destruction of human capital that we have ever seen. What is being done to attention spans? What is being done to focus? What is being done to children's ability to learn? Look, let's just ask very simply. We can even go around the four people here today. How many of us still read books on a regular basis? Look, Winston, I know your house is basically one large book, but for the vast majority of people, I mean, that joke is only funny if you've ever been to Winston's house.

1:13:04But for the vast majority of people...

1:13:06Tom Slater:Great of you to play to your typical size of audience, mate, about 30 people.

1:13:10Winston Marshall:Yeah, exactly, mate. Listen, it's boutique. It's not small. Anyway. All right? It's niche. Anyway. But my point is, we don't even read anymore, most of us. How many people used to read the classics as a way of enjoyment? I think that the amount of people who actually read the classics has shrunk hugely. You talk to university professors who say that kids, even in the most celebrated of institutions, I know they're all corrupted now and all cesspools or whatever else, But in places like Harvard, et cetera, you give them a copy of the Odyssey and you ask them to read it cover to cover. And they look at you like you're asking to do a pilgrimage to Mecca.

1:13:55Winston Marshall:I mean, they'd probably be up for that knowing them. But you know what I mean?

1:13:59Tom Slater:Well, exactly. Can I just say just say a few words in defense of the idea of responsibility and parental responsibility in these situations? look there are all sorts of things that are bad for your children that exist uh some of them are legal some of them are illegal if your 13 year old is doing those things it's kind of your job as a parent to protect them against it now i appreciate this is new technology parents haven't necessarily fully grasped a lot of what's going on but nonetheless i mean i've talked about this a lot my wife is a complete screen nazi with our kids and i imagine that will continue for a long time and the reason is it's been very clear for a long time even if you're not a researcher or someone who's paid much attention the the mere fact that most of the silicon valley people don't let their children use tablets and smartphones etc until a certain age would tell you something about what your job is as a parent so when we talk about oh you know meta has been really evil well look is mcdonald's really evil in making food that people want to buy if 13 year olds become obese as a result of eating a cheeseburger every day is that yes if mcdonald's if if we know if

1:15:14Winston Marshall:mcdonald's if it's found that mcdonald's were intentionally putting poisonous substances in their food yes it is evil and that's what the equivalent is here but they're not poisonous

1:15:24Tom Slater:substance they're not poisonous winston they are uh taste enhancing substances right you can't prove a direct link between the shit mcdonald's putting the burgers and people having cancer but if you if you look at me i think that's incorrect i think i think the reason why the meta

1:15:42Winston Marshall:the reason why meta have settled is because they saw that it's going to be improved that what they were doing they did knowingly that it was detrimental and and harmful to the digital scientifically harmful to children so I think it is actually well we don't know

1:16:02Tom Slater:that because they settled probably to confuse this line somewhat right so we don't know if they really truly believe that or if they just thought we're better off taking 18 billion as opposed to 180 billion down the line after lots of litigation well my broader but that was the case brought against them by the states I understand what I'm saying is ultimately protection of children is first and foremost the responsibility of the parents and if you're giving your children a smartphone or a tablet and unsupervised internet access at the age of 12 or 13 you're a idiot with all respect and it's your fault if anything happens to them at that point it's your job as a parent to look after your kids and protect them from the overwhelmingly dangerous world in which we all live in which there are lots and lots of harmful things that we can all engage in And if you're a child, you have to be protected from that by your family, first and foremost.

1:16:59Tom Slater:As for Meta, yes, of course. I think, as Tom pointed out, it's new technology. New technology always has all these massive, unexpected, unpredictable side effects. And the social media companies do have to improve the way that they do this, especially when it comes to children. But as you said yourself, Winston, there's a massive flip side to this, which is if you start regulating what children can do on the Internet, necessarily you have to establish who is a child and who isn't. And that means we have to verify everyone's IDs and then there's no anonymity on the Internet ever again.

1:17:36Winston Marshall:And that's one thing which even if we park the social media issue, the sort of think of the children argument can often just have a knock on impact for adults in general. I mean, we're in the process in this country of cracking down more and more on vaping because of the idea that it's been particularly picked up by young people. But the net impact of that is then becoming more expensive, less available, ultimately probably banned for everyone, essentially. And I think you're seeing that with social media and it's much more pronounced where social media is concerned because of the fact that the way in which our ability to access these apps just overlap so perfectly with our ability to meaningfully exercise freedom of speech in the 21st century.

1:18:17Winston Marshall:And whilst I think it's understandable that there are so many anxieties around social media use, I do kind of go back to that kind of blame the parents, not having kids myself. it's very easy for me to do that but in this in the same way as you say constant that like it's it's not the existence of mcdonald's per se that is the problem it's parents who would allow their children to eat it every single day right see that seems to me a kind of much more straightforward to regulate shall we say young people's access to social media rather than either getting the government involved or via litigation forcing meta to change tack um i just worry that this is going to become a kind of uh the beginning of just the increased regulation of social media which I think as we've found already from what we've experienced in this country with the Online Safety Act doesn't really end well, even despite its stated intentions, I suppose.

1:19:06Winston Marshall:So I'm not even convinced that this is going to work for the kids because I don't entirely believe social media is the only problem. I actually think the smartphones are the problem. So if you don't have access to social media and you still have a smartphone, you'll end up on Candy Crush or some other thing that you'll just be glued to your phone because the screen is addictive, having the stimulation, everything you use on there is a stimulant and designed to keep you on there. I actually think the problem is smartphones. So I would be more harsh and say that there should be some sort of regulation about selling smartphones to minors, just like we have, you can't buy alcohol or tobacco, certain other things.

1:19:49Winston Marshall:To your point about mothers and parents rather uh you know having them having the responsibility i actually have some sympathy for parents here which is that life is hard raising kids is hard and you've got to work and you've got to take your kids all over to school all over the place and actually sometimes giving them an ipad or an iphone to watch gives you a break and i i actually i understand that the instinct to do that and maybe that should be overcome uh but i'm i'm sympathetic for how how it's an easy solution so let's say the kid's crying all night and you haven't slept for ages you need a break giving them an iphone or an ipad actually sorts that out so expecting the parents to not do that to change the culture around smartphones i i don't think it's going to happen

1:20:41Tom Slater:organically well hold on but but that's also true sorry francis as the only parent here let me just answer this right yeah that's true of everything you could say well you've got a busy life you've got bills to pay you've got work to go to you haven't got time to cook let's eat mcdonald's every day uh when i you know i had a neighbor in azbekistan where i grew up uh who i later learned uh in order to keep her baby soothed she would chew poppy seeds and put it into like in the mix it with the breast milk and basically heroin, giving the baby heroin to keep it calm. Parenting is always a trade-off between doing things that are convenient and doing things that are good.

1:21:21Tom Slater:And so there are parents who, for example, will give their children a tablet to solve fun mass problems, right? I'm not against that. I'm not saying giving your children access to a screen-based device makes you an evil person. What I'm saying is there's an age-appropriate thing. And then there's the unsupervised thing. And then there is what is it that they're actually doing on their thing. And your job as a parent is to monitor across all those three areas and to make sure that what you are doing to give yourself a break, quote unquote. And by the way, look, I've got two children under four.

1:21:57Tom Slater:I could do with a fucking break. I know exactly what you're talking about. But the question is, are you doing something that is harmful to your child in order to make your life easier. And where you sit on that spectrum as a parent is up to you. I'm just saying, if you give your children unsupervised internet access, unsupervised access to a smartphone, when they're young, you are irresponsible and you can't then blame the government. And then people come in and say, well, we need government regulation. Well, we've already talked about how dangerous that is because the unexpected consequences, unpredictable side effects of government regulation look at the online safety bill it was touted as this sort of anti-noncing bill but that's not remotely what it what it what it

1:22:42Winston Marshall:became the part of the problem here as well is there's a class component to this conversation that we haven't addressed and you can see it in the way everybody here is talking about parents but nobody has mentioned the word parent in that there is a significant portion of kids in this country who grew up in single parent households, many of whom that I've taught. And if you're a single parent mom and you've got three jobs on the go in order to keep a roof over your heads and you've got kids with the best will in the world, look, you know, you would want them sitting down, you know, maybe once they hit 10, 11 years old, cracking open a copy of Jane Eyre and getting stuck in.

1:23:22Winston Marshall:But the reality is that's not going to happen. So what do you do with that generation of children who don't have access to parents all of the time, maybe just have one parent who for very good reasons aren't available and they have unfettered access to a screen. I'm not pretending I know the answer, but there are far more of those kids in this country than I am frankly, I'm comfortable with. And I have seen the very real world effects in a classroom of those children who stare at screens day in, day out, out for hours a day, because mum simply isn't around to be able to parent them all the time, because she can't be.

1:24:09Winston Marshall:Well, I've just depressed you, haven't I? Anyway. Yeah.

1:24:14Tom Slater:Depressed and class shamed as well. We have middle class snobs look, well, I am middle class snob looking down on single mothers, which actually is accurate. Anyway, gentlemen, great show this week absolutely fantastic I can't wait for next week if you've enjoyed this, watching this, listening to this make sure to subscribe to all three channels, that's Trigonometry the Winston Marshall show and of course Spike can I just say

1:24:41Winston Marshall:the Francis Foster show as well please

1:24:43Tom Slater:oh for fuck's sake, anyone else got a plug go on subscribe to the just to remind us that wait are you doing it debate on whether islam is compatible with the west on september 11th yes what what's wrong with that it just seems like a random random day just uh plucked out of the air anyway i hope everyone enjoys it and it's uh uneventful uh gentlemen we will see you next week uh at off the fence uh as well as of course you watching and listening home take care and we'll see you in a week's time