France is on Fire & Is Zionism Racism? - Off the Fence

Hello everybody and a very warm welcome to this week's Off the Fence with me, Constantine Kissin, my trigonometry co-host, France is faster. Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall show and Tom Slater from Spike. We have four stories as always for you this week. We hear it directly from Winston who's just returned from France about the riots over there. We will talk about the Holborn and some pancreas by election and the division within the Greens over the Zionism is racism motion. We will talk about ADHD and autism being fueled potentially by the availability of benefits with ADHD among teenage boys rising by a fact of 13, 13 fold since 2000 and autism rising by a fact of 23. And finally the Cornell 7th story where seven men are accused of rape in the United States in the case that has reignited the debate around consent and rape culture on American university. So welcome gentlemen Winston let's get straight into it. You have just returned from France. What did you see and what is going on? I think it's hard to fathom just how massive these riots and protests are. So we're talking 40 cities across the nation as well as towns, villages. It started about three weeks ago, 17th, 18th, and it is spread across the whole country of the 3700 leases in France. The highest single day count of affected schools was over 1,000 including 220 blockaded. Although there are student unions that put that closer to 1,800 leases, by the way, we're talking 24 leases which have been either set on fire or ransacked. At its peak there were 260,000 and this is on the 6th of October. This is a street turnout of protesters. I actually can't think of a British equivalent to this. It all started ostensibly about conditions in schools and that was initially on the 17th of September, a school outside of Paris and some teachers were on strike for conditions and there's a conversation about the state of education in France which I'll get to. But before I get into that detail just to add to how much this is grown. So you have left-wing media, like the Guardian saying, it's mainly peaceful protests. The video you're just seeing there, that's actually in Belgium. So this is spread out of France now and into other countries. The left-wing media is taking the classically taken aside of the school protestors but you also, we're seeing Palestine flags, there's reports of anti-Semitism, there is free Palestine chanting, it is being reported on the right, not just the media but including people like President Trump saying that this is all mass migration and Islam and if you look at a lot of the videos, it does seem like there's a preponderance of people of immigrant heritage but it's also the case that there are a lot of Waikids involved in this which are come to my theory about what that tells us about what's going on a little bit later. But I think it's also just worth going into the state of education. So why is it that they are originally protesting? Well, curiously, the French actually spend more on education comparative to their GDP per student, they spend an equivalent of $16,600 and that's compared to in our country in Britain, $13,178 for six farmers. So there's a staggering difference. They spend more of their GDP, 4.5% of their GDP on education, we spend less than that, we spend 4.3%. So they spend more and they seem to have worse results. It is true that their French results on the piece of scoring system shows that they are lagging behind the rest of Western Europe and classes are over, there's too many students, they're much fuller, they condition a lot of teachers are not turning up so that the education system itself has got problems. But the idea that burning down schools is the solution, I think we'll all agree, doesn't quite add up. So it's blown out, so I went to France to try and work out, is this just France being France? Is this just, they love a ride at the French and there's an adage I heard out there, it's like when the French and the Italians ride it, so what? When the Germans and the English ride, then you've got to pay attention. And that was my question, is this actually a sign of French integration, integration success, all of these immigrant heritage people doing the French way of having a ride? But the scale of this for me suggests something else and I have a phenomenal interview that just came out last night with Charles Garb which I filmed in Paris and we get into the deeper roots of what's going on. But before we get to that, I'll bring you guys in on this and you guys tell me what your impressions have been from the outside. Well you know the thing that stood out for me, sorry Tom, I'll be very quick because I don't have a huge amount to send this, but the one thing that I've found very odd and it may be because we have this sort of, well of course it's the French they're kicking off, they do this every few years, etc. The level of coverage for effectively a neighboring country having hundreds of thousands of people in the street burning shit down, the level of coverage is to me has been non-existent in the British media, certainly, which I find quite striking. And yeah, I mean the idea that these are riots about the pizza rankings does strike me as a little bit, it is stretching the bounds of credulity. I would imagine there's got to be something about the underlying tensions within French society for something like this to be going on. If I can add to that on the media, so this was going on for basically two and a half weeks before the mainstream media picked it up. We all paying attention on X and you basically have to be on X to follow what's going on in the news because they miss it. But it did enter the British public mind or about halfway through this week because it was on the front page of the Guardian of the Times and it was reported on the BBC. But again, it's two and a half weeks after it started. So it's like, how can you not pay attention? And if you see the scale of the devastation and just to add to some of what's what's going on, there's been 215 pupils and 85 staff injured since the beginning up to 800 police have been injured. One boy has had his hat lost their hand, another lost an eye. I mean, it's we just don't have this in Britain. So anyway, just that's just to add astonishing media coverage here. Sorry, guys. So it's most of the peaceful protest. It's said that the Guardian literally said mainly peaceful. Exactly. They can't let it go. That kind of that BLM which to all of us is an in joke now. There's actually become how they continue to report on these. I mean, I cut like all of you, I first was tremendously inspired that the young people of France was so concerned about educational standards that they were willing to take matters into their own hands. We're so upset that the teachers kept showing up late that they decided to attack them in the street. We start upset by the state of the schools in the country that decided to smash the windows and was so going to fuel by anti-racist passion that they burnt out Nelson Mandela School, which was a fantastic detail in all of this. The nihilism on display, I think really does mark it out from what we've come to think of as the sort of standard French riot. We put it that way. This is something that feels like on a totally different scale, not only in terms of the numbers that are involved as you've laid out there Winston. But what it is that they're saying, what it is that they are calling for. Obviously, there was this initial protest, sort of genuine protest around the school issues. But now you see them waving the Palestine flag. You see them chanting, even when they're not strictly muslim pupils themselves, sort of Islamic slogans of one or another. There was one where they were rounding on the police and these kids were chanting in the name of Allah, we will kill them all. The kind of islamic script, the kind of radical islamic script has been let upon even by some of the white French kids as a kind of rebel posture. And Tom, there was one video of the kids doing, singing along, sort of, referencing batter clan in a celebratory way. That's such a fascinating detail. That's a rap song, as far as I understand it, which is memorializing both the batter clan attacks, which is horrific in and of itself. But it's also named after an islamist terrorist called Mohammed Merah, who committed an attack in 2012, which everyone's kind of forgotten about now into Luz, which It was so depraved and it's gone. and there's kind of a memory holders, I say, where he, I think it was originally a police officer, kills a rabbi, goes to a Jewish school, kills a Jewish, go at point blank rage, grabs her by the hair and chutes her in the head. That's who that song is memorializing. There's a video of white French kids storming into a Catholic church and performing this song. Something has gone very, very awry and it does feel like aside from the just nihilism of it all, this has just become with the Palestine flag, with those Islamic radicals being memorialized, this is the, that kind of much deeper sort of anti-Westernism, which yes exists in some of those very unintegrated French suburbs and housing estates, but also to a certain extent, is something that the white French-born kids are reaching for as well. Something has gone very, very wrong in the heart of France. And even though there is no parallel for this in the UK, you can see a kind of common kernel, can't you in terms of some of those problems that that's expressing? Well, there's a little bit of a parallel, and I'll wait for Frances before I give my grand thesis on this. But I think we did some of the things that you said, grand thesis, I might big yourself up a little bit here. Well, no, he's come back from France. His head is, you know, his head is broke. He's become French. He's been disgusting stuff. He's been all over the cafe. I'll tell you about the grand tissue. This is the problem. And this is all I'm saying. I think this is correlated or related to the pro-Palestine rights we saw in Britain and the BLM rights we saw in the States. So I think there's a correlation. But before I come to that, that Frances-- Well, look, as someone who used to be a teacher, there you go, we can all drink. We did a very brilliant interview yesterday with Katherine Burball Singh, head mistress in Macayla's school. And she made the point that these types of rights are inevitable when you teach history through the lens of oppressor and oppressed. And really, what we're doing with these kids is we're not teaching them history in the way that history should be taught, which is an objective look at the facts, at the story, at the context of which events happened. What we do is we go, these are good people, these are bad people. The West are uniquely bad, the French and the British because of slavery, because of empire. And as a result of that, people had to overthrow their shackles. They had to overthrow their white masters in order to achieve equality, et cetera, et cetera. Now you put the Palestine issue on top of that, or BLM, or whatever it may be. The truth doesn't matter. What matters is the narrative and what matters is the lens. So the kids see themselves as oppressed. They see the white man as being the oppressor. They need to throw off the shackles. Palestine, BLM, whatever happens, all gets mixed into this in this kind of soup of this really quite strange and bizarre ideology. But let's be honest about this. The reason that the kids are like this, you can blame the kids, and you know, the kids have to take responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. But who ultimately has to take responsibility is teachers, the education system, and most of all the parents themselves? Yeah, so I think that's-- I think there's a lot of that I agree. I think the part of it that it misses is the fact that there are white European indigenous kids involved in this, and also that it's spread to other countries. So this is the kind of the slight problem of the right wing analysis is that it doesn't account for that. The problem with the left wing analysis is obvious. It's that it doesn't account for the destruction that we've seen. It doesn't account for the scale of this. God explain why white kids are involved in this as well, because that-- why would they be destroying their own country? Because they believe it's right. This is suppressive, all the rest of it. Yes, exactly. So I think one more bit. I know-- sorry, we're both giving you an answer to a rhetorical question, which is, you know, it's bad form, but nonetheless. I think it's partly what Francis said. And it's also partly-- we've got to recognize that if you are a young white person in one of these schools, perhaps where there's a significant group of minority students or where you are, in fact, in the minority yourself. There is an existing culture within which you operate. You've been taught the history of your own country that it's all evil. But also, how do you get status and acceptance and credibility and kudos, and they feeling that you are also yourself involved in some kind of struggle, which every young person wants to feel like they're involved in? And in that context, with these ideas embedded, it's perfectly rational that you would go out and participate in something that is anti-British or anti-French. Because you have been inculcated and indoctrinated into a world view that says, a, your country's bad, but also your race is bad. And therefore, if you participate in something that is anti-French or anti-British, and it's implicitly also then anti-white by the extension of it, you are then one of the good people in your racial group, which is bad. But you get to be good because you are someone who is aware of the history of oppression and blah, blah, blah. And you are now joining forces with your ethnic minority comrades to overthrow the system of oppression. And the point is, as well, when this is a very quick point, but smashing stuff is fun. Yeah. It is? Is it Francis? Yeah. Spoken from his name. Yeah. Is something you want to tell us? No, not on camera, mate. [LAUGHTER] Where were you after Southport? This is exactly what happened. I came back to my country, mate. That's what I was doing. So that's-- I agree with what you've both said there. And what I think we're actually seeing is the revolt of Jen Z and Jen Alpha, who, just leaving aside the kids of immigrant heritage, these kids have been told the whole life, as you guys have just said, that their cultural inheritance either is evil, and where in Britain, we're told about the empire. In America, they're told about slavery. They're told about Peta and Vichy and the collaboration with the Nazis as the original sin. And I suppose they also have their French empire, as well. There's this constant attack on French identity. And to the extent that either it's evil or that it doesn't exist, which is, by the way, the same conversations that are being had here, that either England is an evil project or it doesn't exist. And so I think there's a psychological thing going on, on top of what Constitence just said, where these kids don't have an identity that it's just a void. And I think it's that same void that was underneath what happened in America, the BLM riots, which was predominantly white kids, basically white teenagers and white students and white, sort of, Gen Zed. And maybe, sort of, young millennials, destroying, I mean, two billion dollars of damage. Because there's this sort of anti-America. They hate that they've been told that America is evil. And I think that that ideology, it's either filled by nonsense, woke nonsense, all of these new gods. And by the way, destroying God is part of it, as well. It's an important part of that. Or they go along with this. And Anarchy is not just Anarchy in the streets. It's Anarchy internally in their souls. They need to give these kids an identity. They need to love their country or that love their nation or something. It's so difficult to phrase this. But without a love of your home, it's very hard for a child to build an identity in which to face the world. And I think there's a psychological aspect of what's playing out in France. And so I see this as a Western-wide phenomenon. This is the end game of post-war attack on nation-statism and specifically on the West. And I think it's-- You go ahead, Tom. Sorry, Tom. Well, there was just to add to that a little bit. It does seem like there is this growing trend kind of the world over at the moment for sort of Gen Z revolt. You saw it in the poll not too long ago. We've seen it in other countries where you might have a slightly more authoritarian government who tries to switch off the internet or what have you and then suddenly you have this very huge uprising in some cases toppling governments. The way in which kind of social media can fan the flames of unrest amongst young people much quicker than we've ever seen before. So that's a kind of technical point, I suppose. The other one being that in these kind of inner cities, whether you're talking about in France or wherever you're talking about in Britain or other parts of Europe, you have that sense of rootlessness, which is being experienced not just by an unintegrated migrant population who, in many cases, because of the failures of state policy, because of the failures of integration, France go about it in a very different way to us much more assertive, in French identity, but still seems to produce many of the same problems. They don't really know. They're neither of France, nor of the country from which their parents came from. They're kind of lost and unmoored in that sense. but then you also have. an increasingly diminishing proportion of, say, white French kids in the French example, who are kind of integrating into that culture, which is increasingly one of sort of just urban nihilism with certain third worldest flavors laid on top of it, which is clearly pretty combustible. And then, of course, one thing that has been pretty familiar to us, certainly since the '60s, is that when it comes to kids, young people, students, whatever, they tend to reach for the sort of script of the radical left, wherever it is at that point in time, in order to justify what it is that they're getting up to, their desire to smash things up, as France says, it's a bit of a constant, or their kind of desire to rebel. It's often the kind of left-wing script that they reach for. And you look at where the left in France is at at the moment. I mean, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the France, since Amize, their sort of populist left party, has become increasingly deranged, and as I say, third worldest on a lot of these questions. This is a man who, not too long ago, was defending Charlie Hebdo, but since then, has kind of come to the conclusion because of his discussions with the Muslim working class that maybe he was wrong on that particular front. As you mentioned there, Winston, as well, he's someone who's coming out and suggesting that the French don't actually exist, that it's just a sort of Creole, rather than it being a specific people in civilization. So you see all of that. It's quite astonishing for Mélenchon to go even further left than he already is. There's something quite comical I noticed, is that the French Communist Party isn't even considered far left in France, for the left, established these two. Mélenchon is, makes Corbin look like a saiderite, frankly. Well, I don't know if you saw this week, Zoran Mamdani was accused of being a massive zio by the people around him, but I wanted to come back to your point about identity, Winston. Can I completely agree with you? I think one of the things that we've seen that happened in the post-World War II era, I think people wrongly concluded, wrongly and somewhat correctly, I guess, that tribalism can be the source of conflict and historically has often been the source of conflict. And tribalism along national lines, nationalism, was a very strong force in the early 20th century, which did produce in some parts of the world very strong and violent conflict and conflagration. And I think some people concluded from that that if tribalism, especially along national lines, leads to conflict, therefore what we need to do is eradicate tribalism. And I just don't think that's a convincing theory of human beings, because human beings evolved to be tribal. And I don't think we're capable of not being tribal. And so the question is, what are the lines along which we can be tribal? And the nation state seems to me as good an arrangement as we have. That being the case, we come back to the point that Francis made about Catherine Burble Singh's idea and what you said yourself, which is unless you teach all of those people, and this goes back to our conversation about Englishness and Britishness and the whole reason that whole debate even started in the first place, unless your nation's day has an identity that everyone agrees on and everyone agrees is a good identity that everyone ought to buy into. This is something the Americans do very, very well actually, the American dream, you know, the American founding, etc. Even though they obviously have their own problems, unless you have that and unless you have a very clear educational focus on the fact that we are all this one thing. Our backgrounds may be different, but we are all British. We are all French. We're all whatever it is that we can be. And there is a love of country, love of that cultural identity. And you know, Tom, you say, well, the French have this strong assertion of Frenchness, but the thing is if you've got ghettos, then what you actually have is a bunch of majority native population having a very strong sense of that cultural identity. And then you have all of these people somewhere else who don't even remotely buy into it. That's not a recipe for success either. So just because there is a portion of society that shouts very strongly about the strength of their identity, that's not going to translate into unity if there are huge swathes of the country which don't engage with that part of civic life at all. And so the multi-ethnic societies we now have are going to have to reckon with this problem, or they will split along tribal lines that are below the level of the nation's day, i.e. ethnic, religious, etc. And I think you're partly seeing that in pockets of our own country and beyond. I actually, that's exactly the conversation I had with Charles Garve on my show. So that's explicitly the case after the Second World War. There was an equated the nations with war. And so there was an effort, particularly after the end of the Soviet Union, because there wasn't that sort of common enemy, but certainly after 1945, to be against the nation's state because of that false equivalency, that false understanding. But of course, if you get rid of the nation and you think that's going to end war, good luck with that. You know, there's just going to be war along different lines. What's curious about what's going on in France as you, at your last point there, are constantly about different tribal lines. And this is something that Charles Garve said, was that in France at the moment, you have one third who waved the Palestine flag. You have one third who waved the EU flag. And you have one third who waved the trick or the French flag. So you actually are witnessing the Lebanonization because of this anti-nation ideology. I would add mass migration is a consequence of being anti-nation. I think it's specifically anti-western nation that there's a particular hatred of the anti-western nation, but that the mass migration is deliberate to dilute what's been going on in, sorry, dilute the western nations. And so that's how I see this, how these bad ideas from the end of the war are now playing out 80 years later. And that's what I think is going on, not just in France, but across the West. Winston, just to delve into that a little bit, why do you say it's deliberate? Because the standard analysis of this, okay, look, you've got the Andrew Nether sort of can not even confession, but talking about how under Blair, they wanted to rub the right snows and diversity, quote, unquote. Exactly. But I would argue the central driving force of this is we are releasing our interview with Alan Jones soon. And this was a part of the debate that we had with him. So I mean, Jones left wing position is very clear, which is like, we've got an age in population. We just need to flood the economy with foreign bodies because they're younger and therefore they don't consume as much in benefits and they work. And we need the labor force. And also then the incentive structure for politicians is to boost GDP by bringing in low skilled, badly paid people from abroad because that increases GDP even though I would argue it could actually suppress as living standards for the existing population. But I just want to delve into this because obviously there is the ultra conspiratorial wing, which says this is all an agenda to replace the indigenous population. Are you hinting at that? Or are you, where are you on this spectrum? The reason I've come to that conclusion is firstly, I think that there are explicit reports of this replacement migration. You've alluded to a couple of them rubbing diversity in their faces. A concerted effort to insist that diversity is our greatest strength that immigration built Britain. For example, you see this on our, even our coins. There was a 50 peak coin that was released a few years ago. And sort of that's plastered everywhere. I think that this ideology is held. The UN published a report in 2000, 2001 about replacement migration policy so that they, they were never hiding it. The idea that great replacement is a theory, is a sort of conspiracy theory. I'm sorry, it's, it's there in writing that it was explicit about it. And they, as you said, a lot of people have been arguing it on economic terms. And there's an argument about whether or not it's a good economically. But the reason I've come to that conclusion is precisely because of this widely held popperism, this view that's held by the Green Party, by a lot of people left, even by a lot of people on the Conservative Center right, who have this idea that nations lead to war. And we need to dilute these nations. That's why I've come to that conclusion. It's, I've come to it from speaking to these people, being surrounded by people like this. And from reading the media and seeing it's, it's, the basis of that worldview. I know what you mean, but say you would take Andrew Nether and the idea under Blair was to rub the rights and I was, he, he said, I got a sense that some of what we were doing was about that. But I don't think I, I certainly wouldn't argue that the Blair government looked at immigration as a way to replace the native population. They just were very open to more immigration because they saw it as being, the line they will always allow is, immigration is good for the economy, basic. Yeah, and a kind of cosmopolitan thing as well, the idea that you, there was that Blair quote about the future of a country like Britain is as a kind of cosmopolitan one in which you'll be a sort of meeting place of all of these different cultures and might not be terribly interesting, won't that be terribly dynamic and that, yeah, I would agree that's a kind of a different order than saying we need to flood the nation with foreigners to displace or replace the native population. It certainly does come from a similar root of self-loathing of a sense that the existing culture and community doesn't have much to say for itself, that from everything from the food being bad to the history being rotten, therefore there needs to be a big change as a consequence. But was one of the things I find quite disturbing about a lot of the horrific policies that have been pursued over the past 20 or 30 years, is that if you were trying to rationalize them, you would think that a more kind of concerted clear plan would make more sense, but a lot of them, they were kind of carrying on in this way, without even realizing the full effects of what it is that they were bringing about, in some cases, at least in mind. I just add to it, I think, you know, the word multiculturalism is the one that's used so often. But implicit, if you're pushing multiculturalism, it is because the majority culture implicit in that, the majority culture isn't good enough. And so we need more other cultures. And so that's how I've come into this conclusion is I think a lot of people who say this don't even realize what they're saying. I don't think they realize the consequence of what is implicit in their ideology because it's so widespread. And so you even get this on the right. I think we discussed this last week or the week before when we're talking about British identity. Even someone I really should not will say Britain is a multi-faith multi-ethnic society. No, Britain has a majority and it can sustain a certain amount of minorities, but it is not first and foremost a multi-faith multi-ethnic society. It is first and foremost a British society. And so a lot of, a lot of this is implicit. I think it's in the water, I think people don't realize they're so swimming in the ideology that they don't quite realize what is implicit from what they're saying. And I think a lot of the things that you've described there are actually coping mechanisms with the consequences of mass immigration. So first, you bring in a lot of people and then you go, well, what we need is multicultural ism. What we need is to say diversity is our strength. Otherwise, these people who are already here will be excluded and we don't want to exclude anyone because that would be bad. So I think much of the framing of this issue is really about how do you deal with the fact that you have done mass immigration? And it's why we're having these debates, some of them helpful and some of them not about Englishness, about Britishness and all the rest of it because after having two decades of just, oh, people don't understand the numbers involved, you know, it's often interesting to me that people who oppose mass immigration of the kind we've had I described as being extreme or holding extreme views, whereas my view has been the entire time through this. If you bring more people into a country in 10 years that have come into it in the previous two millennia, I would argue you are the extremist and the people who are concerned about that are normal people having a very normal reaction to what you're doing. But in order to not deal with that reality, you then have to fabricate all of these sort of as Americans would say band-aid solutions where you go, no, no, no, we don't have ethnic tensions. We have diversities our strength. Let's slap that down with multiculturalism, slap that down with diversity, let's slap that down with inclusion. All of this ideology seems to me is actually the consequence of mass immigration being done to the country in the way that it has. And then you have to cope somehow, which is why we're having all these nonsensical slogans thrown at us. Yeah, as is the censorship as well. I mean, if you look at the history of British hate speech laws, 1965 Race Relations Acts introduced in the idea of incitement to racial hatred. This is entirely in the way, not even obviously of the post-war migration. And therefore the idea that suddenly we needed to crack down on this form of dissent because otherwise we're going to go to hell in the handcart effectively. So all of these things being downstream from that is really, really striking definitely. If I may, so constant in your point is that it was mass migration first, then the arguments about multiculturalism to sort of deal with it. But is that how I've, what came first, right? But that isn't to say that you will not be able to find some left-wing ideolog writing at a university in the 1970s, who says some version of we need to replace that ethnic majority with minorities. But what I mean is, I think the time at which these ideas become mainstream is when that average member of the public looks around and goes, well, we've got, you know, X percent of the population are now foreign-born, unless we have some way of keeping this whole thing together, we're going to have problems, ie, diversity is our greatest strength. That's kind of my argument. Right. But I think that this argument has been playing out much longer than just the recent, you know, last 20 years. I mean, even if you go, this is what Enoch Powell got in trouble, you know, talking about back in the 60s, that we've had race rights since the 50s, when, you know, you have migration coming in, and there's this conversation, oh, you can't, it kind of battle with the people in this sort of indigenous English who are dealing, the poor indigenous English who are dealing with the latest influx and the downside of that, or whatever the upside to might be. And then there's this kind of battle, you can't say that that's racist, it's, it's, I think they've been hand in hand from the beginning. And, but, but think about this, when did this, when did we start talking about multiculturalism, when did we start hearing the diversity is our greatest strength? I would argue it was in the late 2000s following the mass influx under the, the Blair government. That's when these conversations became massive. Like, I don't remember multiculturalism or diversity being mentioned in the late 90s by anybody really is my, it kind of became, it kind of became more explicit then, but as, as a sort of policy of state multilateralism as well, which is slightly distinct from the rhetoric and what have you. Again, relating to ethnic minority or religious minority groups via community leaders, the funding or in otherwise giving charitable status to various organizations which will present themselves as the authentic voice of Muslims or this group or that group. That's been with us for a very long time. I mean, you saw that really kicking to give with the rush to the affair. All of these Islamic organizations, no one had ever heard of that all had charitable status or were in receipt, receipt of state largest in one form or another putting on demonstrations calling for one of our most celebrated novelists to be at best imprisoned. So there's something that was going on like for a very long time. I think it's definitely right to say that it became more explicit, the elite, particularly the sort of liberal left elite were reaching for it much more as a rationalization of what it is that they had done when you got into the sort of 2000s more so than before. But yeah, to Winston's point, it's a very long time in the coming, I think a lot of this stuff is not always obvious, but it's certainly been the case. Well, speaking of the successes of multiculturalism and integration, shall we move on or did you want to make one more point? I've just got one last point to make on the French rise because it's another thing that's been massively missed by the mainstream media, which is that the Pope visited France at the end of September and he was greeted by between 800,000 and a million people on Champs-Zelise. The whole of the Stad de France was full for him and he was at various places around the country, Metz, Nancy, no, where was he? He was at, oh, I haven't got the exact places here, but he was at various places. So people were doing confession and kind of communing together in public. So quite astonishing to see, I'm not sure if it's right to call it a Catholic revival or something, but there is this other spirit that is emerged on a mass scale that's happening literally at the same time as these rights. It's an amazing illustration of the two frances that are emerging and just to show how much the media are missing all of this. It's quite astonishing, actually. Well, speaking of the successes of multiculturalism, we had a green, green off or whatever you might describe a bi-election in Holborn and St. Pancras, Tom, tell us what happened. Yeah, so we got the results in the early hours of this morning. This is, of course, was the Holborn and St. Pancras bi-election, Keir Stuymer's, Old Sea, and the results are in labor of held it with 12,292 votes, the greens coming, not far behind, but still pretty significantly short at 8,928 Conservatives in third place and on and on. It goes. Of course, it was incredibly high profile because that Palantzki, as you can see there, was the man who threw his hat into the ring. The Tit Whisperer has come a cropper, he failed to hypnotise the good people of Holborn and St. Pancras. Of course, it would have been great if both of those two parties could have lost somehow, but given that was pretty unlikely, I think there's some positive. to be drawn from the fact that Zach Lansky has hit a wall here, and not least because it clearly comes off the back of the green party, the climbing from the peaking popularity was experiencing not that long ago. I mean, I looked this up on Venice AI before we came on here just to remind myself, but there was a period not that long ago in which the greens were reaching 20% in the polls. Like, this was incredible. I mean, this is something that we'd really never seen before around the time of the local elections. They racked up loads of gains, particularly in London. They were getting maritalties. They were taking control of councils. And then people realised who Zach Lansky really was. So the point that Venice pinpoints, which I think is in May, which was, I believe, immediately after the Golders Green anti-Semitic attack, when, as people will remember, Zach Lansky took to social media, to like and share posts, that were expressing sympathy primarily for the attacker in that horrific double stabbing, because he thought it would be, it was being handled too roughly by the police. And since then, you've seen it go down and down and down. Of course, the other more immediate context to that is that horrific Zionism is racism motion, which passed at the Green Party conference in the past week, which, in and of itself, I think is brazenly anti-Semitic because of the fact that this is the only nation on earth. This is the only people on earth who the Greens and the Islamolists seem to have a problem with having self-determination. And also because of the fact that there was an amendment that was put to this motion to essentially protect Jewish Green members from being ostracized or from being in any way discriminated against, because they will likely attend Jewish synagogues with the vast majority of which will be Zionists, because the vast majority of Jews in this country are Zionists. And that was voted down as well. So not only do you have that extremism in the Green Party, almost more damningly, Zach Lansky didn't really own it. He didn't vote in that, for that motion, he scuttled off to Hoban and St. Pancras. I believe we've got a clip of him trying to explain himself a little bit here, which is a little bit wrong. Which way would you have voted? Again, I've answered this question many times. I would have voted for the amendments, including to make sure that we weren't determining that it was a single motion. So the motion, you would have voted against the motion. So people understand this very clearly, you would have voted against the motion in the hall on that day. People know you weren't there. Well, I'm being voted against it. I'm being really clear with you, the motion as amended, I would have voted for, the motion unamended, I wouldn't have voted for. Do you think this shows on or not? I mean, less sort of less of interest. But what I think that underscores about Zach Lansky is, is he irritating? Yes. Is he incredibly cringe? Yes. Does he have all these absurd things in his backstory? The hypnosis, the looks like lying about his own family history. It looks like some would say lying about his own CV. Yes, absolutely. Is he leading a party which has become a sort of haven for sort of Corbin era anti-Semites of either the Islamist or the leftist persuasion? Yes. He's also a complete fucking coward at the same time. He, I think deep down knows that he is writing something that you can't really control here. You saw that with that motion, which clearly he didn't fully endorse, but he's now having to own. You also see in it, we're talking about Zora Mamdani being accused of being some sort of genocide supporter. Those kinds of conversations been happening within the Green Party as well. Even before the conference, there were reports of internal discussions amongst members where Zach Lansky was being accused of being a Zionist and soft on genocide because, as we all know, that's the sort of position that he has held. And I suppose, given now that there's a lot of questions about what happens next, is Zach Lansky going to remain in his position? Is he going to be deposed? It is worth remembering what the alternative to Zach Lansky at the top of the Green Party looks like because it comes in the form, and I believe we've got a clip of this as well. Of someone like Mothin Ali, the codepsy leader, who was making his points about Zionism at the conference. Zionism as racism motion has dominated this conference. Can I ask, what's your view on the motion, and are you going to vote for it? It hasn't dominated the motion. It's a one motion out of 149, but Zionism as a recent motion is something that the media have focused on quite a lot. I am going to vote for it. What's happening in Israel right now, and what's happening in Palestine right now is a genocide. You know, we've got the biggest number of child amputees, a classroom full of kids have been killed every single week, and that's the context that we've got to remember. So the people waving flags, the Israeli flags, are they racist in your view? I mean, they're welcome to wave the Israeli flags. There's Palestine flags being waved. People are welcome to express their free and fair opinions. But if you're saying it's racist, and there are flags displaying the Israeli flag. Maybe we can sort of let that trail off there, but Mothin Ali is also one where he is presented certainly by the Green Faithful as a very cuddly character, and even there is trying to put up a slightly softer base, complete nonsense. I mean, not only is his wife in a Nicarab, which I think is a slightly strange thing for someone who's supposedly in the top-tier leadership of a progressive, supposedly liberal party, after October 7th, he was putting out videos on TikTok a day after saying that Palestinians have a right to resist. He was leading a hate campaign in leads where he was a counsellor for a local rabbi who was a sort of chaplain at the university, because he was a reservist in the IDF to be handed out of his job. The rabbi was met with death threats. That's a move out of the house. And more recently he's been seen as showing support in WhatsApp groups to various candidates activists who have found themselves coming a cropper of disciplinary processes because of the despicable, blood-libral stuff that they've been repeating in those groups. So on the one hand, it's good that the Green Party have been humbled to some extent that they've come down from that peak because I think the sensible British majority have realised that this is not your grandmother's Green Party. This is not just your sort of top-ness hippie-mom who cares about the rivers and the environment, but at the same time, this is lamo-left alliance is going to be a fixture of our politics for some time. It's in the Green Party at the moment. It couldn't get worse in the Green Party, but it's not going anywhere. It would be what I would say. Looking at this by now. Well, I don't know if I agree with that, mate. They just want to make hope normal again. Who are you? Who are I, mate? I'm a fucking patriot like you. Anyway, but I thought that was a fantastic analysis, Tom. The one thing that I would add is, and love to, again, Winston is going to ask the question, "Who am I?" It's my fellow countryman, Andy Burnham, who I think actually has really outflanked to the Green Party here. Because when it was on the Kirstaama, you know, Kirstaama was, you know, no one knew what Kirstaama really stood for, and the moment he started speaking, even fewer people knew what he stood for, because most people fell asleep and really didn't actually listen to him. But what Burnham has compared to Stammer is a modicum of charisma and likeability, and he's sort of positioned himself as to with the people who are pro-Palestine guy. Look, we didn't really get it right. I understand what you're kind of thinking and feeling. This new Labour Party, we are going to be actually far more, you know, empathetic to the Palestinian cause of blah, blah, blah, whatever that means. To reality is, it doesn't really mean anything, but it kind of sounds and feel good, because it comes from Andy Burnham, and in a bit he's going to start talking about Greg Sossi's roles. So actually, what Burnham has really done is outflanked to the Green Party here, and made it more accessible for those people who were voting for Green to go back to Labour. And it's going to be very interesting, because actually, he's been very skillful at that, and I think more and more we're going to see hemorrhaging of the Greens to Labour. Now, you're always going to get the hardcore, you know, but basically these Lamon nutcases, but Labour as far as strategically, I think they played a bit of a blinder here. Can I, can I just push back against that? So no, I think that you're right. No, okay, fine. Next, turn this camera, turn this microphone off, Dean, go on, just get cut. We're here to talk about free speech, not practice it. Exactly. We don't want any joy in your roles on this podcast. Go on. Frankie, you're right that he's pandering to the left, and he's done that as well with sanctioning on Israeli businesses, etc. But I think it's at the expense of traditional red wall Labour voters. So not just the sort of pandering the pro-Palestine group, you also see it with his total failures on immigration. And a key aspect, actually, of the Burnham speech was his, from the Labour conference was the rolling back on on triple lock. So I think the things he's saying for trad red wall Labour voters are not popular. So he might be pulling the party left, and that might seem very popular at the Labour conference. And he might have journalists from Sky and New Statement tearied, but I don't actually think that those correspond with the patriotic Labour trade voters. And so that's where I think he's not playing a blinder. I think there are negative consequences. is for him based on this pull to the left. And that's one thing that came up at Labour Conference as well was just the fact that the complete fantasy that they were reconnecting with their sort of Labour-like working-class routes. People were constantly talking about the issue of class. Even under Andy Burnham, Labour Party remains an overwhelmingly middle-class party in terms of the people who vote for it, in terms of its membership. It's been on that journey for a long time, but it shows no sign of stopping. And Andy Burnham is now in the position, and maybe it is the right, I think it is probably the right strategic play for the reasons that Francis is outlined. But uniting the left-wing vote now means uniting the middle classes, the students, with a layer of, in certain cases, the Islamic sect areas. I mean, that's what uniting the left now means. It certainly doesn't mean the sort of patriotic working class of the country, who are sort of up for grabs. Some of them will vote for Labour, because they will like some of the policies on the economy, a lot of them are voting for reform, who are still very clear leader amongst white working class voters, in particular, but working class voters in general. And that's kind of the state of play. But they have to pretend still that they are this party of the working man and woman, but it is totally an act for the reasons that you say. Can we talk about design as something? Because this has been very confusing to me in Francis since October 7th when Israel became such a huge story. I don't think I've even heard the word before, particularly. It was made something that was very undiscussed in the sort of mainstream general media. And I looked it up on Venice, while we were discussing this. I said, give me a factual definition of Zionism. Zionism, according to it, is a national movement that holds the Jews constitute a people with the right to national self-determination in the ancestral home and the land of Israel, stroke Palestine. So Tom, can you give a good faith rendering of why somebody in good faith would would claim that Zionism is racism? Is there a different working definition that they have that would logically explain why you would claim it's racist? Well, it's hard, it's hard to sort of steal manate because it's based on such bollocks, but I will at least say it as they would put it, I suppose. The idea being that rather than this being a national liberation struggle, or rather than this being the self-determination of the Jewish people in the place in which they came from, in which they have been for thousands of years, despite the expulsions and all the rest of it, that this is fundamentally as they would see a settler colonial project, that this is something amongst European, Jewry, Ashkenazi Jews going to a place that they had nothing really to do with, at least not to do for a very long time, displacing the existing Palestinian population, and therefore it's to be understood in that way, that Zionism in their view, unlike any other sort of national project, is by definition racist and colonialists because it exists at the expense of the population that were already there. I've heard people, I think even including Owen Joseph, make that point from here or there. There's a bunch of problems with that. First of all, there are various countries which were founded at the expense of the population that was already there. You could talk about America, you could talk about Australia. These things have happened over history, and we don't, even though there is obviously a section of, say, the American left or the Australian left, you think those nations don't have a right to exist, that argument is certainly not as mainstream, you know, I'm a Green Party conference declaring that the Declaration of Independence is racism, and maybe there's a tell there that for some reason it's the Jewish state which animates this level of fury. And it's also not even a fair comparison because of the fact that again, this land of Israel, this is ancient. You know, these people have no connection to this part of the world. Yes, there is in their absence because of the, again, the fact that when the Zionist movement properly kicks into gear in the late 19th century, people who were then called Arabs have since become known as the Palestinians were in that land for reasons that we can get into. It doesn't change the fact that there is obviously a clear claim there. And also, it's just the fact that that state now exists, whether you like it or not, it's there now. Well, and what is the solution to just ethnically cleanse the Jews who live there? That seems to be what is all right. But to your point, I mean, you used controversial examples of America and Australia, which as you say much of the left would argue illegitimate countries because they're also colonial projects. But actually, I think if we were being historically complete, we would argue that other than perhaps the native population of Australia, the aboriginals, literally every country in the world is a settler colonial project because nobody lives on the land in which they were the first humans to live on today. And by that definition, every country in the world is a settler colonial project. By the way, the Arab population of the Middle East is also not remotely indigenous to that part of the world. The Muslim religion is certainly not indigenous to the Middle East. It was for a very long time, the center of Christendom and before that, the center of other civilizations. So it seems to me the odd thing about this is just about starting the clock when it's convenient for you in a location that you've particularly chosen as the source of all of this. While applying none of those rules to anyone else, including the people on whose behalf you are advocating, who have no ancestral claim to that land either if you apply this model. No, it doesn't make any sense. And I think the fact that the double standards fall on the one Jewish state, I think, is a tell to be perfectly frank. You don't even have to look that far why people are not getting exercise about the founding of Turkey or the ongoing persecution of the Kurds. Why does that not? I'm very exercise. I'm very exercise about the founding of Turkey. Very exercise about the founding of Turkey. Well, we should we should do more about that, but that's again, all these double standards, cascade, don't they? But yeah, but imagine you're not exercised about it on general principle, rather you have an issue with Turkey and Constantinople, specifically I would imagine. Yeah. I think this is tied to what we are talking about France, which is the idea of being anti-Nation, anti-self-determination and particularly anti-Western. Eve Zionism is the self-determination of the Jews in that location. They're against it and the same reason they're against the England, the English state. They're against the French state. They don't like nation states. And for them, they equate nation state with war, they equate it with jingoism, they equate it with empire. They think the Nazis were nationalist. Well, the Nazis were a world they wanted to dominate the world. It was an empire building project of FNO supremacists. It wasn't a nation state project. And so it's kind of this fallacy at the bottom of it. I think that's what they think, that's why they keep calling Israel Nazis, or they use that sort of symbolism. That's how I see that they're all tied together. I think it's what you go back to. Sorry, France, just go ahead. No, no, I was just going to say, look, a lot of this also comes down to education. Most people get into these arguments, they get very animated, they go on protest, they shout, they point fingers, they hurl exploits, they go on social media to proclatize their views. And once you scratch the surface and go, have you actually read the history of the Middle East? Do you actually understand what it is that you're talking about? Do you know about how Israel was created? Do you know how Jordan was created? Do you know how Lebanon was formed? And if you actually ask them, they wouldn't be able to give you, I think the vast, vast, vast majority, even a sliver or a basic understanding of not even the Middle East for thousands of years, but just the Middle East in the 20th century. And as a result of that, you have this vacuum, which then, and like all vacuums, it needs to be filled, this narrative gets poured into it, this bastardization of history just starts to get, we're going to fill it up. And as a result, you just get these perverted narratives coming to play where people can't even engage intellectually with these conversations or these topics, which is why you see them chance slogans. And why do they chance slogans? Well, number one, because it's easy to memorize. Number two, you know, it sounds good, it makes you feel good, but also it covers up for the fact that history is nuanced, it's complicated. And really, if you want to have an opinion on a subject like the Middle East, you need to do more reading than 15 minutes on TikTok. I think that's right. I think that's a perfect place to end it to me. The only thing I was going to add was that to Winston's point about, yes, there's the anti-temptism, but there's also the anti-nation. I forget who said it, but I think it's very, very true. Israel took the lesson from the end of the Second World War that the nation state was essential for survival. Much of the rest of the Western world took the lesson from the Second World War, that the nation state was a big part of the problem. And I think in that schism, you see why there is such misunderstanding to put it lightly and also demonize. when you've got a country like Israel, which is, again, proud of its heritage, got a sense of itself and willing to stand up for itself because it just doesn't, aside from all of the other claims, the misunderstanding of history or the rest of it, that dish doesn't compute to a certain kind of Western intellectual. And I think one other thing, perhaps worth adding before we move on to our next story is I think Israel is actually guilty of committing what the left progressive wing of things regards is actually the worst sin of all, which is Israel is strong. This is the opposite of everything they would like all of us societies to be. And so because to me, I'll be honest with you guys, I've never understood massively this whole thing about the right of people to a land. Forgive me for this sort of cynical Russian take, but I kind of think it's all bullshit. Ultimately, the people who have a right to the land, historically speaking, other people who are able to defend it. That's kind of how that goes, right? And so what Israel is ultimately proving is that very point is like everyone can talk about the right to this and the right to that. But we're actually going to make sure that our borders are secure, which is something most of you in the West are failing to do. And I think of all the thing that, ideologically, at least offends the progressive left about what Israel is doing, being strong is at the very top of that. It's how dare you have a strong vision of what your country is supposed to be, how dare you defend its borders, how dare you defend its culture. We don't allow people to do that here, and you are doing it over there, and by the way, there's obviously a horrific war going on in Gaza, which stacks on top of that. But there's nothing more progress of hate than a country being strong, unless of course it's a country that is attacking the West, in which case they're all for it. Anyway, moving on to our third story, which may partly be feeling a lot, I mean it's not, I was going to do a joke, but I won't. It's a story about the fact that there has been a gigantic rise in ADHD and autism diagnosis in this country. And a report, a massive report is warning that this may, may you'll be shocked to hear, be partly being fueled by the fact that if you have an ADHD or autism diagnosis, you have access to benefits and support of a level that's never been available before. And the stats I gave at the top of the show, there's been a 13 fold increase since 2013 fold means 1,300%, it's increased by 13 times, and autism has risen by 23 times. And by the way, I think it's really important to say I have autistic people in my family, we know people who have actually ADHD, part of this rise is people who've been suffering for a long time without being recognized in the challenges that they face, having now the opportunity to actually get help and support. And I think that's great, but I think it's also fair to say that the incentive structures of society are now incredibly rewarding to people who may be, let's just put it gently on the border of a diagnosis, who are now being tipped into it by the availability of benefits, et cetera. Now, Francis, I can see the smirk you've got going. So why don't we go to you, mate? Well, so I actually was diagnosed with ADHD, so you can all shut up and listen to my lived experience. Yeah, it won't be for very long, because you won't be able to concentrate for more than 20 days. But listen, I got diagnosed the old fashioned way, I got diagnosed the old fashioned way, it was in Venezuela, I was four years old, my aunt met me, she looked at my mum, looked at me, looked at my mum, you know what she said Winston, she went, this child is redarded. And she was an educational psychologist, so that's a technical term. It's actually a true story. But I don't look, I think we joke about this. Look, there are people who struggle with, you know, autistic, I've taught autistic kids, I've taught kids with ADHD, when it's, when it is profound, when you can see it in front of you, this is a real challenge for people, they really do struggle, they find it very difficult to access. You know, things like, things like relationships, friendships, jobs, and you go, okay, and then we should have a conversation about actually what the state could and should do, should the state do something, should the state not, that's a conversation, which we should all be having what support should these kids be having in education. The problem comes when everybody starts getting diagnosed as autism and ADHD, and if everybody has it, then quite frankly nobody has it, and really it's an incentive structure, because if you get diagnosed with autism or ADHD, what's the first thing that happens, well, you get extra support in school, which might mean you get a laptop, that's very nice, who wouldn't want one of them. And also, you get extra time in your exams, I was reading about how I think it's something, as you know, Dean, if you could use Venice AI, please, to bring this data about the number of students at Cambridge who identify as having either autism or ADHD, and that, again, that will mean that you get more time in exams, but there's also the flip side of it, which is, if you go to the mathematics department at Cambridge, or the physics department, they've all got autism, and it's quite obvious when you see them, so this is also a subject that is actually more nuanced, and more actually a little bit more tricky than some people, either on either side will want to admit. Well, I have to add to this is that I think ADHD is actually more correlated with smartphone use, and particularly use amongst Infant Zero to Five and older, and I just had Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath on the show, I know you guys had him on about six months ago, and he doesn't a great explanation about how it is that this kind of tech affects kids. I'm prepared to accept that there's some sort of incentive stuff that's going on here in this story that's encouraging it, but I think ultimately it comes down to this tech, smartphones, particularly, but it applies to tablets, and to some extent, TV, that kids, when their sort of brains are coming together at that young age, getting all this extra stimulation is screwing it up, but I'm not a neuroscientist, so I'm not going to be able to do a convincing explanation of why that is. But that's kind of, that's what I think is the real story with ADHD, and there seems to be, we're talking about incentives as well, there's the benefits incentive, there's the get free laptop at school incentive, get extra time on the exams, there's also kind of a cultural incentive as well, that more and more people, and it's not just where ADHD are concerned, are encouraged to see themselves as on a spectrum of mental health, rather than being kind of definable disorders. And in a way, I think we have to bring back mental illness, like this idea of mental health as something which is, as I say, a spectrum, something that you, in the same way that you might take on a bit more timber enough to take it off the same way that mental health is like that as well, but sorry, make mental health as great again, mental health, mental health, but yeah, bring it back, because I think the way in which, and I'm sure you'll have noticed this, and of course President Company excluded, even aside from the younger people, but the way in which ADHD diagnoses have ripped through the comedy industry and journalism as if it was like an OAP swingers cruise in January 2020, and it's incredible, like the speed with which many people are sort of redefining. What might previously be good in ability to concentrate, maybe being a little bit scatty, whatever, as a clear cut defines sort of disorder, as been pretty striking. And I think there is, there is genuinely a problem there, and it's not just with ADHD, the way in which something like depression used to be something which was quite kind of clinically defined. You sort of know it when you saw it, the person who really couldn't get out of bed in the morning or really struggled to deal with assistitudes of life has now just become a synonym for going for a bit of a rough patch. I think it shows that we need to, yeah, make mental health great again, and make mental illness great again, I should say, and bring back this idea that it's all right just to maybe be in a bit of a bad place in life, or maybe not be as perfectly well adjusted mentally as you might be. Or have certain structural challenges, or importantly with something like ADHD is that you may have certain structural challenges that other people don't have, which make you particularly vulnerable of susceptible to certain things and require certain adjustments that other people probably also benefit from, but not to the same extent. So I know, for example, having worked with Francis for a long time, that for him creating a rigid order and structure of his day, making sure that the place he lives in is clean and super organized, all of these things, which are important for all of us, for someone who has more of a challenge concentrating or managing information or items or whatever. And that is something that that you can do, whereas if you just told you have a mental problem that you have to overcome with drugs or whatever and benefits, then you're never really given the reminder that like everyone will have a certain challenge like I get made fun of in all our friendship groups because I don't understand, I just literally like visual art just doesn't work on me and most music doesn't either. There's certain things that we all have that don't quite work in our brains the way other people do and by the way, you know, you make the joke about the ADHD ripping through comedy, the reality is having spent lots of time with comedians, they all have ADHD because ADHD is a skill for comedy. The ability to quickly make connections between unconnected things sporadically and to be all over the place is what makes somebody good at comedy. And so the fact that that is something that's happening is actually a very good reminder of the fact that something neurodivergence, if we can use this term, is often not about in disability, it's about an ability to do something well and something else not well versus the majority of the population or the other way around. And if you look at it in that way, you actually realize that this thing that you've been told is a problem is actually a massive asset if you want to pursue a career in the creative arts or elsewhere where it is an asset that you literally couldn't, you would need to give a normal person to be good at that thing. And so finally, the stats from Venice AI is, this is in 2022, 23, 872 Cambridge students disclosed themselves, disclosed that they had ADHD. And that was up from 440 in 2020. So basically an increase of 50%. And I imagine that that is being increased all the time. Well, and to my point, by the way, about ADHD, take autism, you mentioned mathematicians and physicists at Cambridge. Like you think Isaac Newton and Einstein were like just like neurotypical, I mean, like this, the autism can be a skill for certain things. Now it depends on what kind of autism it is, how crippling it is to the person's other function and whatever. But this idea that people who are quote, quote, neurodivergent have a very useful skill for society may even be, I'm obviously not an evolutionary biologist, but I'd imagine there's a reason they're around. And partly that's to do with the fact that actually there's a very adaptive thing about having a certain proportion of your population be that way, wired mentally, because it creates an opportunity for them to do certain things that a normal person simply would never do, particularly when it comes to scientific breakthroughs or whatever else it might be. I'm talking out of my art here, but I'd imagine there's some truth to that just theoretically speaking. Anyway, I reckon we move on to our final story, Francis, which is all the way from the United States of America, and it's the Cornell 7. Absolutely. So this is a case that has gripped young people, social media has become another culture war topic very much in the sort of the style of the Lindsey Clancy. So I'm going to go, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go through the actual facts of the case. And then there'll be people who just know certain other things, and then we can have a broad discussion around it. Okay, so the incident happened on the 19th of October, 2024 on the Cornell University campus. This is a civil case. It is not a criminal case. The difference is a criminal case is brought by the state. A civil case is brought by the individual. In a civil case, what happens is the burden of proof is lower. So you need a lower bar when it comes to evidence, to secure a conviction, and also as well, it does not mean that you go to prison. What will inevitably happen is that the person will be found liable, and then they will be given a penalty, a financial penalty that they have to pay. So that is a very, very important point here. So Jane Doe, a ledger, she was drugged and raped at a frat house, and that Cornell failed to protect her or punish the men involved. She alleged seven men from Cornell's tri-fi fraternity assaulted her for hours in an instant tri-fi. I know, it sounds like something you don't agree with, but a star bar, a high-fi, a high-fi assaulted her for hours in an incident involving alcohol and ketamine. Those lawyer alleges she was traumatized, unable to function, or accept the horrors of what happened. Those lawsuit contained an image purported to be from a frat group chat in which a participant alerted other members in vulgar terms as the potential for a sexual encounter with the victim. In this, this happened on the night involved. In one message in the snap chat, several men discuss a free sexual encounter with Jane Doe in the early hours of the 20th of the 10th, 2024. CBS published excerpts of additional text messages between one of the defendants and a woman who appears to be Jane Doe. And Dino, if we can get the text message up, please. Thank you. In one message, the man appeared to apologize for how, quote unquote, "things went down." He said his message was quote unquote kind of fuzzy, and that he and another male, man, felt bad for being too intoxicated to quote unquote, "shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand." Jane Doe responded and her said her memory was quote unquote super-clouded too. She also wrote quote, "none of the sexual stuff was illegal," unquote unquote, and that she enjoyed being with him and another man. Doe suggested that they smoked together again, but leave out quote the extra five billion men and ketamine end quotes. There was also a quotation saying our body our choice. Now, "changes were not brought in 2024 because prosecutors believed that evidence did not meet the legal threshold. And this is why a civil prosecution is brought, if you remember my explanation of a civil prosecution, it is an prosecution that is brought by the individual, not the state." Now, the prosecutor, at the time, the most senior prosecutor in the county is a gentleman by name of Van Halton. He included a summary of what Doe told the Cornell University Police Department. He said Jane Doe's sworn statement in November 2024 did not alleged she was drugged against her will or gamma rates. On the contrary, she described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual. She apparently told police, "I was pretty okay with all of this. A matter of weeks later," she said. She later said, "I can say with 100 percent confidence I was right." So, that is where we now stand. Can I just, we've left out quite a few of the facts on this analysis. We've got a few of the facts. And they're just to clean it up in simple terms. So, what's currently happening today is a civil case with this woman taking it out against the people she's alleging a rape to. But what happened back in October 2024 was she participated in this drunken orgy. She was keen to go back to the drunken orgy, but then she got turned away. At that point, she then changes her tune from being excited about it to wanting to report it to the police. She reports it to the police. The police decide, on criminal terms, there's nothing here because she willingly participated. She willingly took the drug. She's intoxicated on her own accord and there was not enough evidence that she had been raped. Likewise, all the other guys involved didn't, you know, they were intoxicated. There was not enough evidence for rape, but then there was a title nine, which was carried out by the university. And this is back in January 2025. So, soon after the criminal case was thrown out. And that title nine ended up exposing the kind of decadence and sort of orgyistic drug-taking stuff that was going on. And a lot of these men at this fraternity were, some of them were expelled, some of them were banished from coming back, and they were punished, although not as far as I can tell because they had raped her. She changed her tune specifically when she was, she had said, she was excited to go back to the fraternity for another orgy, until she was rejected by them. And before she was rejected, she even said she was going to bring cigarettes because she was willing to do it again. And then when she was rejected, that's when she changes her tune, that's when she goes to the police, so there's a specific turn there in where she, so she's not consistent, she hadn't been consistent with her story throughout this process. I think that's just my understanding of the grand arc of this story. Sure. Yeah, well, exactly. And so the issue is that you effectively have a situation in which it's, I mean, there's different angles you could go at it from, but I think the central argument here is about the fact that, however many people participated in a sexual event, as far as we can tell entirely, consensually, all of them were intoxicated and one way or another. And then one of those people then changes their mind, and because that person is the woman involved, that then is treated differently because if one of those guys had said, actually, this was not consensual, I think you'd have a very different outlook on all of this. And it brings into question. What did them did? I think one of the guys did say that. Later said that he had been sexually abused. How is his civil case going? I'm not sure, actually. But I think one of them did say that when it was brought up. So yeah, yeah, he hasn't got the protest in the street exactly supporting him. But I think the bigger context of all of this is like, I think the real question feminist to campaign on this sort of stuff needs to answer is, are we incapable of consent? Because what tends to happen in these situations is if a woman participates in something that she later decides she actually is not that happy about having done, then she can withdraw her consent afterwards. And everybody will support that even though that's not what happened in the time, whereas the reality is young people in particular make all sorts of stupid decisions that they then regret. But you can't withdraw your consent to participation and something having consented to it at the time. That can't work. And it's certainly not a legal standard to which society can function. And to build on that just a little bit, it does seem like on American campuses, on British campuses as well, where we have seen various scandals like this. And particularly in America, these title nine kangaroo courts, which take shape after you have these allegations being leveled, where even if there's not enough evidence for a proper criminal prosecution, even if, as in this case, that original prosecution runs the ground of the evidence, it doesn't go any further. You then basically just have these campus administrators who are deciding the fate of young men, based on a lower standard of evidence, a lower standard of proof. I believe one of the quite shocking details about this particular title nine procedure that was undergone at Cornell was that because, as ever, these things are done on Zoom these days. One of the people who were on the committee were driving at the time in which they were deciding the fate of some of these young men. So the casualness with which, even if it's just kicking them out of the university or destroying their reputation, that's pretty serious to put it lightly, not least because a lot these men have been named in the Cornell student newspaper I believe as well as certainly online these the identities of everyone involved is depressingly easy to get your hands on. And it does speak to whatever actually happened here, there's this core contradiction in American and Western campus culture, which on the one hand is very sexually permissive environment. This idea that, you know, why not have group sex? Why not sleep around? Why not do this? Why not do that? But at the same time, this intense concern about rape culture or a kind of puritanism almost that can kind of that can attend that Joanna Williams wrote a very good piece for spite for us about this about this and with that contradiction you can have a lot of injustice. You can have a lot of whether it's the case in this one or not who knows essentially regretted sexual experiences which at the time might have felt terribly adventurous and interesting what a young liberal woman might want to get involved in but afterwards turned out to be what these things can often be quite degrading and therefore rather than just learn from that show we say do you then have this other option which exists? But I think well that's a big issue. Yeah, go ahead one. To just to Tom, this is an article published by the Free Press written by Jared Lederman but the Cornell University, "Vumselves" published a guy to self-exploration and sexual self-exploration, sexual inventory stocklist. This is on Cornell's health website and the list includes exploring your sexuality. I mean this is two people at once, sex with three people at once, sex with more than three people at once, cyber sex, open sexual relationships, sex toys, blindfolding, biting, scratching, spanking, slapping for sexual pleasure, sexual clumps, sexual activity, can't be bone or frances, and something for sexual pleasure. Even stuff about bodily fluids. I mean so this is the university themselves who you know they carry out this sort of title nine and punish all these boys but at the same time as you're pointing out Tom promoting this kind of sexual liberation. If I can zoom out me too seem to as far as I can tell finished with Tara Reid accusing Biden or this is I think 2020 and it kind of fizzled out there and the way that this has become a huge cultural story seems to be because the left sort of needs something on here that James Lindsay tweeted about this and you know midterms coming up that there's this kind of that same sort of anger. I think of the law of the original me too movement was kind of a repackaged anti-Trump movement. It was kind of a rage against what Trump coming to power in his first term and it was kind of coming out in otherwise not to say that there weren't legitimate cases within it but I think there was some very unlegitimate cases or illegitimate cases sorry in that case and so I think you're seeing the way this is becoming a political movement seems to be I think possibly related to what's going on at that party political level. I think structurally they're underneath all of this there is a there's an issue that I sort of alluded to earlier which is the the modern attitude to women's agency let's say was the mantra of my body my choice but what was never was never communicated I think to the people who who pursued that worldview is that agency comes with a responsibility and so if as in this case I hope our viewers and listeners will forgive me for the graphic detail if you're snorting cocaine of someone's penis or not cocaine in this case ketamine ketamine you know I'm kind of very liberal on sexual and drug stuff I mean if you want to do that I it's not my preferred hobby but if that's what you want to do on a Friday evening that is your right I suppose but you then own the consequences of those decisions and it doesn't matter how young you are or whatever if you made those decisions you own their consequences we all made very stupid decisions as kids and young people ourselves and so if you participate in all of this stuff on a consensual basis then you have to own things that come from that including your disgust and regret afterwards if in fact that is what she went through or simply the fact that you thought these people were going to be your friends forever and actually they were rejected you from the next party that you wanted to go along to and it just strikes me as this there's there has been for a very long time this attempt to say that women have complete agency with no responsibility and you see that in the title nine style stuff coming through which I just don't think works it doesn't work and it's one of the reasons that women end up in the situations and also as well we're talking about consent and the reality is if you when you look into that case practically nobody was able to consent if you actually read into it they were intoxicated they were all on alcohol they were taking ketamine which is serious disassociative you know side effects so how many people were able to consent they were talking about consent but the reality is most of them probably don't even remember what actually happened they all admit their revenue their memories were kind of fuzzy so how can we talk about consent when the reality when the truth is most of the people weren't even there I mean they were there in body but they were certainly when they're in mind all spirit all right well on that happy note depressing everybody that is us for off-defense for this week and we will be back next week at the same time see you then