UK Debate Festival Founder on Cancel Culture, JK Rowling, and Why Open Debate Is Dying

Claire Fox [00:00:00] As people are being punished as we speak and people are losing their livelihoods. I mean, it feels to me like a modern version of McCarthy is of people are being named shamed reputations of ruins. I mean, there's nothing worse than being called a bigot. I mean, it will destroy your career as

Vance Crowe [00:00:16] The crow flies on the Vance Crowe Podcast. Podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. I interviewed a woman named Claire Fox from all the way over in London. Claire and I met a few years ago when I was working at Monsanto. Claire runs an organization called the Academy of Ideas where she puts together some of the most fascinating, exciting, intimate, dangerous debates that are going on anywhere in the world today. And as a person representing Monsanto, I was quite used to every time I asked, Hey, is there a place that we could come on and talk about our perspectives? People slamming the door in our faces, but not Claire. Claire met me on the streets of London and took me up to her office where she was running a ragtag group of six people that are dedicated to the idea that free speech debate, arguing about how we think about things is the foundation under which Western society thrives. I find myself admiring Claire on a scale that I don't really find myself connecting with other people. She has taken on a life that cannot be easy, is fraught with danger all around. And she always has this positive attitude, this way that she continues to believe that we can build society, we can do good things no matter what place we're at. She was a major leader in the Brexit follow up. After the votes were counted and the UK decided to leave the European Union, there were a lot of people in the powerful that said, oh no, this was a mistake.

Vance Crowe [00:01:48] We've gotta reverse this. And Claire was one of those people that brought together a huge number of coalitions that normally would've not seen eye to eye, but together because they were pushing against the establishment that wanted to keep the UK in the European Union, they found a way to work together and to build something that nobody had ever imagined would happen in the modern world. So I'm really excited for you to hear this interview. It's one of those that made my heart speed up as I wrote Claire an email to finally ask her to come on the podcast. And throughout the entire conversation, I found myself mesmerized by her ability to articulate an idea. We're gonna get to that interview, but I wanna let everybody know about the telepresence basics class that I've put together. So I was working for a board of directors that when we got on Zoom calls, you took these people that were high professionals, they looked great, they sounded great, they knew what they were doing. But when they got on a video call, suddenly they looked, I don't know, not so great their way they were presenting themselves the way they sounded. Everything about their interaction took them away from being the consummate professional that they had always been in regular life. So I created a small training for that group and it went over so well that I realized I could start doing this for clients. After doing it for clients for a few times, many of whom loved it and were willing to pay at about $150 a seat. I realized I could also offer this to people that didn't have an organization bringing it together, but people that wanted to get better at how do I look and sound and how do I create the background that will allow me to have conversations that are great, that are the kind that I was able to do when I was in person.

Vance Crowe [00:03:26] So I put together a 70 minute course and for $39, you can get your hands on it. But podcast listeners, if you go to the two, the the page listed in the link below, you can find a discount code that will allow you to take $10 off of the cost. This is because if you're a podcast listener, you know the value of good sound and looking good. And I'm excited for you to take this class, see if it changes the way that you look and sound, and then tell others about it. So check out the link below with the discount code and I would be really excited to hear how you think the class went. Send me some before and after photos. Alright, thanks for this. Now we're going to go to that interview with Claire Fox. Claire Fox, welcome to the podcast,

Claire Fox [00:04:19] Great to talk to you. Great to see you across all these miles.

Vance Crowe [00:04:23] I cannot believe that we are reuniting once again after many years when I met you as the head of what was then called the Institute of Ideas, but is now the Academy of Ideas where you bring together people from all over the world and hold the most rigorous debates maybe in the world right now. And I can't think of a better guest to have as we have the wild changes to culture going on. So I'm really excited to talk with you.

Claire Fox [00:04:47] Great. It's, it's goodness knows. When we launched the Battle of Ideas Festival, we said that free speech was important and that things like the culture wars were not just confined to universities. A lot of people thought we were making it up. Excuse me, here we go. And I mean, if it wasn't for Coronavirus, we, we have a programs Battle of Ideas festival planned this year, but of course we haven't got a venue that will host it. So we'll probably be holding it in the, the beginning of 2021 if we get round to it. But not if we get round to it. We're allowed to go in anywhere without social distancing because as you say, the joy of something like a Battle of Ideas Festival is that you are bumping into people from all over the place with all sorts of different political perspectives in corridors and having coffees and chatting and you know, hundreds of speakers and thousands of attendees. And obviously in a period where you have to avoid people because of social distancing, it's not got the same vibe. We, we've taken all our work online. I mean, I'm never not in a Zoom debate. We, we, we've carried on working throughout the lockdown, which has been quite a strong lockdown in the uk and, but it's not the same. You know, that's been great, but it's just not the same.

Vance Crowe [00:06:00] So let's talk about the battle of ideas because in the US as far as I know, there is nothing that goes on like this, which is why I hopped on a plane when I was working at Monsanto and flew over to see what you guys were doing. But for people that have never seen a battle of ideas, don't have a concept for debate. 'cause it's not a part of our regular culture.

Claire Fox [00:06:18] So we try and take the big issues of the time and work on panel discussions with people from all sorts of perspectives. On over one weekend, I think we have over a hundred panel debates, you know, three, 400 speakers and a thousand and it's a public event. So the other thing is it's not professional, it's over one weekend. We cram it in at any one time. There's 10 or 11 debates going on, you can go into each one. They're not formal debates, they're not foreign against. But there are attempts at saying there are always different perspectives. You might learn something if you kind of listen. And we also have a USP of saying 50% of the time will be handed over to the audience. So it really is a very lively public forum. And we've over, we've been doing it now, I think 15, 16 years. And it's just grown from strength to strength. Our slogan is free speech allowed. And you know, that didn't sound very radical maybe when we started it. But as time has gone on saying that you support free speech even has become a controversial thing to say. And we've tackled a lot of the issues around the culture wars, but we also have strands of debates on the economy, on science. We've been concerned, I suppose, about things like the precautionary principle nerve, you know, risk aversion, but everything, you know, you could be discussing Beethoven in one room at one time and then go on and talk about GM crops, another room, and then everything.

Vance Crowe [00:07:50] Well, when, when I was, when I was there, the, what I found was at first you look at it and you're like, oh, those are the debates I know about. Right? Whether it's GMOs versus something else. But you get into like the weird recesses of the world where you have a mom come in and talk about how sexual assault laws put on minors made it so her son that urinated in public is now considered a sex offender. And you're sitting there being like, am I supposed to be hearing this? I don't think you're allowed to talk about that. And but then there are thousands of people around you that are excited to engage in the debate in a way that you can't do normally.

Claire Fox [00:08:25] Yeah. I think that we've, we've tried to, without being, without playing the kind of shock jock role, we don't go for kind of having, being outrageous. But we know that the, if you dig deep underneath a lot of subjects, there's conversations that people want to have. They want to be able to ask questions about controversies around, you know, trans issues. You know, that they know there's a line, they know there's a, a position you are meant to adopt, but they don't really understand it. Can we have this conversation? Can we challenge some of the orthodoxies? And I think that that's all we were trying to do is to create a space for public debate where you would not be shut down by somebody saying, I find that offensive. But on the other hand, people really did believe when we started this that it would lead to kind of riots and chaos and everyone shouting at each other. But actually it's not like that either. It's a perfectly civilized, lively public exchange of views. I mean, it's not even that radical, is it? It's what the public square should be. It's like town hall meetings as they should be. But obviously over the years there's now so many things where we know in the back of our head, you, you can't say that, you know, it's kind of a, a, an internal sensor. You, you shouldn't say that. Don't ask that question. Oh my God. So we go for collecting together the best speakers who've written really interesting articles from all around the world with different perspectives who we think have said something that will make people go, do you know what? That's such an interesting thought. I'm gonna now speak myself and ask a question or make a point.

Claire Fox [00:09:56] And that's what we do.

Vance Crowe [00:09:57] One of the talks that I remember is Lenore Skenazy, I, I can never say her last name, right? But she talks about a concept called Free Range Kids. And I remember thinking like, this'll be boring. Kids are allowed to go outside and play. Why is this a controversial topic? And she started talking about the mothers that were arrested for letting their children walk to school on their own or playing on a playground by themselves. And, and you start to hear people in the audience say, I tried to bring this up in my PTA and I was booed down. And that's when you start to realize that what you're doing, Claire, what the Academy of Ideas is doing, it's so, I don't know, it, it feels dangerous but special. Why in the world did you get into this world? Because it, it is all danger for you, I think.

Claire Fox [00:10:41] Yeah. It wasn't necessarily a great career move in the sense I could have probably be a earning a lot of money and, and and, and and so on. It's, it is a bit controversial. But you know, I I I came from, I was a teacher for many years and actually, and, and then I, I I I took a rather extraordinary a decision to, to, to take on temporarily. I thought publishing a magazine which had been called Living Marxism 'cause I'm a lefty, which I know immediately will, people will be going, oh my god, what's she gonna like?

Vance Crowe [00:11:12] Wait, what was it called? What was it called?

Claire Fox [00:11:14] Living Marxism. And we relaunched it exactly. We relaunched it as LM Magazine, which was supposedly beyond left and right. We were, we were nodding. I mean, I, I, so I'm, yeah, I'm from a left wing background, but, you know, a a form of left wing politics that I think is far removed from the kind of leftish social justice warriors and the identity politics obsessives of today. And, you know, we could have an argument about left and right, but, you know, it was a different kind of argument then. Anyway, that's what I did. And one of the things when I was teaching was I was very aware of the fact that, that I taught 16 to 18 year olds was I just didn't feel that they realized that there was more than one side to a story. You know? And they were being reared in a and socialized into a society that was dominated by spin doctors who were kind of refining what people said. So you had to follow the script, which wasn't legitimate. You know, what didn't encourage intellectual introspection or, or, or bring politics to life? I felt that the newspapers were being gutted and there were very, there wasn't enough good journalism. And I also thought at the time that the universities were beginning to close down open debate and academic freedom was under threat. So I thought, right, I, I'm now publishing this magazine. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do live events and see what happens. And they just sold out every time. So at the end of the publishing the magazine, which was another story in 2000, I launched what was then the Institute of Ideas to full-time put on debates and see if I could do something with it.

Claire Fox [00:12:47] And we have, we've managed to survive small operation punch above our weight. I became better known. I didn't ever go back to teaching. I became a, a media commentator as people do as well. So our brand became known and our, the main thing was through word of mouth. 'cause we've never had any resources or money or anything. So we were never one of those kind of big festivals like that. But through word of mouth, people started to hear about us all around the world. And we were able to put on eventually things like the Battle of Ideas Festival and regular, I mean monthly debates and so on and so forth. So yeah, it's been a great, it's been a great ride and, but also hugely important to give people a voice. I think. I think, you know, one thing we've learned in politics in the UK and America and people talk about, you know, the populist moments is that many people don't feel they have a voice. They haven't got anywhere they can go to talk about issues, to raise concerns. It's confined to a pretty limited group of people. And so the other thing is, is that I think you could say without in any way box ticking, we managed also to attract a very diverse, socially mixed group of people to our events. So you really could get, you know, working class families coming down from the north of England, which is kind of like the equivalent of kind of going rust belt or you know, like people who wouldn't normally go to an intellectual festival and they held their own more than held their own with graduates and postgraduates in the top universities and all ages as well.

Claire Fox [00:14:20] Not aimed at young people, but lots of young people come. But you can have an 18-year-old and an 18-year-old having a really lively exchange in over debate around whether we should topple statues. That's what we do. And we do it well.

Vance Crowe [00:14:32] You do it very well. And I think you're probably a very good person to ask about the state of universities because in the US there's something going on right now, and I think it's actually missing the woods through the trees because it's, people are talking about how the, the Trump administration is going to say, if you aren't actually physically taking classes, but you're from another country, then your visa is no longer valid and you have to go home. What most people don't realize is that a huge percentage of the operating budgets of, of schools, particularly state schools, is comes from foreign students that pay full tuition. They pay private level tuition to go to a state school. And without that cash coming in on August 15th, you're gonna watch universities not be able to pay their bills. So the, I I think there's like an air of, of like, hey, we're, we're looking out for our poor graduate students, but in in fact it's actually a fight life or death whether or not these universities will survive. Is that going on in the UK right now? Do you see a parallel?

Claire Fox [00:15:32] Yes, it is going on here, although maybe not quite as politicized about overseas students. It, it's actually more pragmatic, which is that the coronavirus issue has led the university sector, I think to be far too cautious about reopening the universities in October in any kind of normal or proper sense. And of course a lot of overseas students, if they're gonna pay that much money, are not gonna come here. Right? I mean, and so in fact, by default, a lot of universities are gonna lose overseas students fees. And you know, I think Trump is making a real error here. I mean, you know, I, it, it wouldn't be the first time I'd have disagreed with him, but I really think he's gonna, it's counterproductive what he's doing for his own, from his own point of view. See, the thing about overseas students in any country is, is that they come in a temporary way, but they actually, not only do they provide fees, but they actually open up the, the, I hope my internet's okay. It's saying it's unstable. Some of, you know, some of the people are gonna be your great innovators. Some of the people are gonna be your allies in terms of business in the future, you know, it's part of being part of the world now. It doesn't have to be tangled up with immigration or concerns about these kind of more political issues. It can just be a very positive step for any country to have people who want to study.

Claire Fox [00:17:03] I mean, American universities are fantastic, a lot of them. Not all of them are fantastic universities. And you wanna be world class, you want the best physicists, you want the people who are the smartest engineers. You want the brightest artists to want to study in America. 'cause that's gonna help America. So if Trump wants to make America great, it's a good thing to have that. And it would be silly, it seems to me to, and counterproductive it will lead to a lot of universities closing, which is one of the,

Vance Crowe [00:17:31] I mean, I see your point on that, but I also,

Claire Fox [00:17:33] Yeah, I,

Vance Crowe [00:17:34] I'm, I'm watching what I think is one of the great dangers of a society, which is to have an indebted young class, particularly a young intelligentsia class, which they're going into school, they're taking on massive amounts of debt that they may not be able to pay off in an entire lifetime of work. And, and, and they come out with these degrees where they're, they're not necessarily prepared for the office environment. Yeah. And so now you have people with debt that can't contribute that is being exacerbated by the universities. And I don't see another way to stop this other than to stop the universities for a little while to make them feel the pain of having an administrative class within the universities that are sucking money out of all the young people.

Claire Fox [00:18:22] Yeah. So that's in a way a different question though. I don't know that depriving overseas students fees is the way to go. But I do agree with five years ago, I think in the uk they started setting a target maybe later than that, or 50% of all young people should go to university. And I think that's ludicrous, right? Because it wasn't about removing the barriers for young working class kids to go to universities. That would be brilliant, because that would be allowing those people who are academic to go to university. Of course, you don't want it just to be an elitist pastime, but university's not for everyone. And through doing the, you know, why would not everybody wants to live the life in their mind, right? That's not, it's not a compulsory thing, but by setting a 50% target, you've ended up changing the job market so that effectively you now need a degree in order to get jobs that you didn't need a degree for before. And these young people are ending up with massive debts, a a very swollen university sector. The meaning of going to a university and what a purpose of a university is almost forgotten because now it's just almost a, a, a road to work. And in the meantime, you've, you've got this, this degenerate atmosphere that's merged on university campuses in relation to politics. And I say degenerate because there's also been, at the same time, the emergence of what, you know, what's let called political correctness, you know, postmodernism, there's no such thing as truth post-structuralism.

Claire Fox [00:19:55] And so a lot of young people are kind of embroiled in the culture wars by university whilst actually studying at great expense to get a degree that's not actually content-wise, very challenging, very often in order to get a job that you don't need a degree for in the first place. I mean, what's the point of all that? And at the same time, they, it creates a them and us atmosphere here, certainly, which is, if you don't go to university now, it's almost as though you are written off as a young person. You know, if 50% are going and 50% aren't, then the 50% who aren't, are sort of somehow lesser citizens. If you had a situation where those people who wanted to pursue academic study, which they, that that should be allowed, and any country should provide for that, and 10% of those young people went to university, or 10 or 15, then they would be, that would be fine. But then they wouldn't allow, they wouldn't be allowed to be the dominant way that young people understand success. So I think it's a real shame that people see universities now not as an opportunity to study knowledge for its own sake, but as a necessary step in order to get into the job market. And they get massive debt in order to do so. And at the same time, they're exposed to some pretty grim political regressive trends.

Vance Crowe [00:21:14] When, when you think about these political regressive trends, one of the things that I hear from a lot of my friends that are the calmer type or the, the people that don't really want to think that we we're in a culture war or in a, in a low grade civil war, they say, look, anytime you look at the age that you're in, it always feels like things are hotter. It always feels like things are more important way bigger disaster. This is gonna pass just like everything else. What do you think of that? Or, or is it just that we always feel like we're in this hot of a situation?

Claire Fox [00:21:45] No, I think it's complacency on their part. I wrote a book first edition, I think it was four years ago, and then I, a second edition two years ago called I find that offensive. And then I, I still find that offensive. And actually that's how I know Lenore in terms of the cotton wool kids, the, the, that, that whole issue, because I was trying to understand actually by looking at American society, why free speech was no longer important to young people. And I identified that there was a safety first mentality and they were wanted safe spaces and to be looked after and protected and that, that had happened in schools a lot. But anyway, I, I was, I was talking about the growth of the culture wars on campus as well, and people wanted to say, oh, come on Claire, you know, when you're at university, it was just like, this wasn't it, you know, lots of students arguing and fighting and being stroppy and rebelling. But this is, I think, a different mood. And you can tell actually, and I argued, no, this is more profound than just young people. I think that's gonna see Pat into broader society and is affecting many establishment organizations and what's now known as woke. The fact that it's become so mainstreamed in recent months, particularly in relation to Black Lives matters and what's happened to George Floyd and the reaction to that and the growth of that internationally would indicate that just under the surface, this culture war was brewing. You know, it didn't just happen because one man was brutally killed. That was the tip of an iceberg of something else.

Claire Fox [00:23:16] And in fact, the reaction to that brutal killing, what everyone thinks about it, and I was appalled by it. And I think there's a real problem with police brutality in the US in particular. And I do think there's a problem of racism in the criminal justice system in America, and you can have an argument about that. But we can all see that what's happened since then has got nothing to do with George Floyd. I mean, he's almost been forgotten. As people pull down statues, decolonize curriculums cancel, culture has emerged. And when your friends say, oh no, it's just a passing phase, it will go away. It isn't. Because I think that what we're seeing is the reorganization of society around a very narrow and prescriptive set of opinions. And if you don't have them, you will be punished. You will be punished. And people are being punished as we speak, and people are losing their livelihoods. I mean, it feels to me like a modern version of McCarthyism. People are being named shamed, reputations, ruins. I mean, there's nothing worse than being called a bigot. I mean, it will destroy your career because most people aren't bigots. You know, you wanna say that someone's a bigot when they're a bigot. And even then you wanna argue against them, not necessarily silence them, but if every, if you know, if, if the majority of people become labeled racist or bigots or transphobes or homophobes or whatever it is, you end up in a situation where a smallish elite or basically defining who is acceptable as a new elite and a new elite is emerging, there is a shakeup.

Claire Fox [00:24:48] And you can tell, and the corporates in particular have gone along with this. I mean, every corporation now is trying to prove, is bringing in people and saying, oh, we're gonna change. We promise, we're sorry, and all the rest of it. And you can see there's a big shake up in, in, in, you know, certainly in UK society. And I, and I think certainly in America it's even more

Vance Crowe [00:25:10] Certainly in, in the us. So I mean, I, I can relate to this. I brought Jordan Peterson to the American Farm Bureau well before anybody really knew who he was. And that, bam, it was like a matter of hours before it happened. Slate's writing about how, you know, I'm a I'm a Nazi supporter and, and we're helping, you know, the the racist agenda of a crazy person. And you see what that does to your work environment. There are people that would secretly come and be like, Hey, we're still friends, we're still cool, but they're going to meetings where people are calling for the CEO to publicly fire me. So it's, it's, it's this weird thing. And I think a lot of people don't realize that corporations, when you get this sort of surveillance mentality, when you get this sort of idea that, hey, if anybody's doing anything wrong, you come tell us and we'll take care of it. That actually works in the benefit of the corporation. They want no lawsuits, they want no problems. So if they can get their employees to report on each other, although it doesn't help for the long term stability of that company, and the short term, it means that you get to go virtue signal. It means you get to know what's going on with all of your people and you keep destabilized. You don't have to worry about, you can knock people out that are a threat to your

Claire Fox [00:26:24] Exactly. And it'll be used in a cynical way and it's being used. I can see it now. So it's so ironic because it's so antagonistic to even the idea of a kind of radical movement because, but you've got situations now where HR departments are mandating that staff do white fragility training, unconscious bias training.

Vance Crowe [00:26:48] Have you taken an un unconscious bias training class?

Claire Fox [00:26:50] No. No. I luckily I'm my own boss, but I have read all, I have read all about it. And this has now been brought in by the way, to British schools because the teach head teachers are so scared not to do anything that they're bringing in consultants. I mean, there's an industry of them. But anyway, you go off and you do this, but you are, you are told by your HR department there, everyone's doing them on Zoom. Now they do these course if you say, I don't want to do it, which somebody did who works in the nuclear industry in some friend of mine, the nuclear industry are doing unconscious. I mean, I don't want to, what, anyway, so they're doing this thing, this woman queried whether she wanted to do it, said, I don't feel I need to do it. I don't need to prove I'm an anti-racist or I'm not a bigot and I don't wanna waste my time. Basically, she was told that this was going to be not any frowned upon, but it sh showed that she had unconscious biases because she wouldn't recognize that she needed to go on the training. She's, she's quite senior, by the way, and, and you know, so it wasn't, but she's a bit of a loppy person anyway, right? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:27:57] It takes a certain kind of person to be able to push back there.

Claire Fox [00:28:00] Yeah, no, but what you've then got is you've got some people in the senior management team who probably wanna get rid of her anyway, right? Because she's not a yes woman. So suddenly this becomes a matter, and then as you say, I mean, I've got endless anecdotes of this, but, but exactly as you've described, you then get a situation where the bosses are the good guys because they're putting on this training, they appeal to their staff if anyone is not complying, and you have a snitch situation whereby people are complaining about their colleagues and encouraged to name and shame and complain, and then the managements can sit around and think, well, that person's always been stroppy, haven't they? They've always caused us trouble and they're earning a lot of money and maybe now we can get rid of them, right? So people don't seem to understand that this is the mood and anyway, as it happens, what business is it of an employer, what the private political views are of its staff? I mean, this isn't outrage. I mean, there is such thing as you as an individual are allowed to believe things. I mean, unless they're gonna say that you can only have, you know, mandate your politics when they interview you. And that's not the same as discrediting an organization. I understand if somebody goes out and kind of creates havoc in the public sphere and embarrasses the, but we're not talking about that now. We're talking about being not getting in line and it's really, you know, get in your lane, stay in your lane, do as you're told. It's a fantastic mechanism for disciplining the workforce.

Claire Fox [00:29:32] But I also think it's just so, it is so spineless of the, of the corporation, but not, and the institutions and the establishment figures here who are so frightened that, that, you know, these young radicals who are kicking, they don't have to kick down the door, you know what I mean? They're, they're kicking an open door basically. And it is watching these kind of institutions crumble and, and thinking, what, what can we do? What can we do? And you think, say no.

Vance Crowe [00:30:05] Well, I mean, that's much, that's much, much harder. So having worked at a corporation where they had, you know, the, the idea of I am a supporter of X group than you would get a little badge for your name tag. Maybe it's a flag, maybe it's a, a symbol. And you would wear those around and you'd put them on your door. And if you didn't have the right flags on your door, everybody knew you're not moving up. And, and like the, so the question then becomes, like, for me, the answer was, I'm, I'm never gonna thrive here. And so I wouldn't say that it was my primary reason for going off on my own, but I knew that it was never gonna happen for me if I stayed there. But what does somebody do that's a physicist, that they can really only work in four or five places in the whole world because of their specialization. Now if they resist, they may end up becoming a janitor. Is that equation worthwhile? Yeah,

Claire Fox [00:30:56] No, no, of course. I and I, for, for individuals by the way, I don't condemn them. I understand people, you know, I have my family on a warning. You sit there, you say nothing, you do not object. I don't want everyone to lose their jobs, right? I know this, right? So I'm not trying to create martyrs of people resisting. I mean, people can, and I will support them, but I, I'm not naive. What I'm talking about is I think, what does it say about a society whose leadership enforces these things in bad faith? Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's so often in bad faith and through cowardice, and I, I, I find it, I mean, you remember, I come from a Marxist background and I feel as though I've got more, you know, I I I used to argue with lots of people in the corporate sector that they had to argue for, for example, economic growth, right? Against a a a lot of the anti-growth rhetoric that was coming from environmentalists. I'm saying it, I'm having arguments with people who run oil companies who sound as though they're Greenpeace activists and they're saying, oh, we can't say that. We can't say that. We can't say that. We've got to use this rhetoric and that rhetoric. And I said, well have some bottle. I mean, you believe as I do that you need more wealth in society. You're gonna have to do certain things to get that wealth. And, but they wouldn't do it. So the irony was that you have a, you know, they, they wouldn't, they wouldn't even speak truth to their own power.

Claire Fox [00:32:32] I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:32:32] It was kind of like, yeah, you, you pointed this out to me years ago, and it has always stuck with me that, that the oil companies started presenting themselves as the biggest advocates of solar and wind energy, when really this was just a, a cynical ploy to be like, look, we're we're getting energy out there. But they knew that there were orders of magnitude more energy coming out of every oil well in the world than any wind farm. And, and, and that's the path they chose, which was some, some kind trying to stride the line between environmentalism and, and growth. And those two things probably always conflict.

Claire Fox [00:33:08] Yeah. So, and I'm just saying that that, and that's what we've seen now in these cultural questions. The corporates themselves are willingly, you know, they're say, I mean, we are about to face a great economic catastrophe potentially because of Coronavirus. I'm not blaming, you know, that's, it's had a very big impact on the world's economy. Many people will be destitute facing unemployment, jobs being lost. And there's one big corporate that was sponsoring the festival that I, that I run, and they've just canceled. And they say, well, we're under enormous pressure, you know, and I understand, you know, we can't sponsor this year because of the, the, the, the impact of the virus on our workplace and so on. So I hear all this, I'm actually reasonably sympathetic if disappointed, and think, well, I suppose, you know, if you have to choose between sponsoring my event and somebody's job, I get it. And then the next day I heard that they were making a, a a, a multimillion pound donation to Black Lives Matters. And I just sat there and I just thought a multi pound donation, you know, to Black Lives Matters and associated groups. And I thought, great. So you, you, what you were giving me was absolutely back change in your pocket and you couldn't afford it. And I was sympathetic because I thought, well, fair enough, we face a recession.

Claire Fox [00:34:40] But I mean, what I'm saying is, is that what kind of priorities are these in order to, they, they, they now are actively politically engaging on one side of the culture wars. And they, they didn't need to do that, did they? Nobody, I don't even know that they were asked. I can't blame, I can't blame Black Lives Matters or the associated different groupings that are involved in this. I can't blame them for the fact that the corporates keep handing them money. I mean, it's almost like awful. Anyway, so I find that dis distressing that things have gone in that way because it also closes down debate. That's the main thing. You know, if it was that a corporate decided that it wanted to support particular group, and it could be Greenpeace or it could be anything else, I mean, that's fine, right? I mean, that's, you are the, you know, you run a company or you run it, that's fine. But when it becomes the only narrative that you are allowed to embrace and that if you don't embrace it, that you are somehow treated as though you are less a human being or that you are politically dodgy, that's when it becomes dangerous. Because that's not just then kind of doing good works. That's a kind of enforced political outlook that's very narrow and actually demonizes anyone who doesn't go along with it.

Vance Crowe [00:36:00] Well, it comes across to me as religion, right? It comes across to me as we have these beliefs about what morality really is and what you ought to do. And these things that are nebulous, that an ordinary modern society, we would say, Hey, those are left up to you and your family and your church and your community, whatever. But now we're saying not only are am I going to publicly espouse these beliefs, but I'm gonna force you to do it too. And if you don't, then you're not in the religion. You're an outcast. You're a heretic. And, and people forget, I think because we've had such a long time with peace between religion and regular society, that when one group gets in control of deciding who's a heretic, you start running into some real dangerous times.

Claire Fox [00:36:46] I I agree. I I, but that's also the thing is in the modern era, we've understood, we got over the reformation, we got over the religious wars we thought, or largely in the, in, in, in the modern western world. And we would be in a situation whereby you had religious freedom, so you could be an atheist, but you could also be a Pentecostal or you could be a Catholic, or you could be a Muslim or you could be A-A-A-A-A Buddhist or whatever, right? And you could kind of, and these were private matters. You publicly expressed them in terms of your, your, your personal morality and your going to church or, or, or, or praying or, or, or whatever way you chose to worship. But where, you know, but as you say in the medieval days, I mean, this is bad history, but you know, it was like, if you don't agree with this, you are a heretic and you will be burnt at the stake. Now obviously we are not burning people at the stake or some parts of the world, sadly, that that still kind of can happen. But broadly speaking, that is considered, that's why I call it regressive. That's what we think to be in an unen enlightened time. But we are now in a situation where morally you are absolutely right. It does feel like heresy to go against what is then this kind of demand that you publicly acclaim something. By the way, I think that that was summed up by that, that slogan that's just emerged recently, which is silence is violence. Now that's, that's an extraordinary slogan, because what that says is you're not even allowed to, you, you, you are not even allowed to just keep quiet.

Claire Fox [00:38:22] You have to say that you agree, you have to wear the badge. You, you are enforced to take the knee. You have to put the black. I mean, I know people who work for major arts organizations in this country who were reprimanded for not having a black square around their Instagram. So they didn't do anything, but they didn't want to play some black square around Instagram, you know, virtue signaling game. And they were reprimanded by managers for not doing that because it would bring the organization into disrepute. And these are major arts organizations in the uk. I mean, atrocious. So it, that's like heresy, isn't it? You are a ve

Vance Crowe [00:39:06] I, i i, I, so I run a book club, and this month we're reading 1984. I, I, somebody had mentioned it and I thought, well, we'll just refresh it. I am shocked by, and this may be the fact that he just wrote a book that's like a horoscope, no matter what time you're looking at it looks like this. But I can tell you that the two minutes of hate that they, that they have, all the people do. So anybody that's never read the book is in the very beginning when every, every day you have two minutes where they show on these screens, the enemy, all the terrible things, and everybody is supposed to yell and scream and throw things. And that's what it feels like because they're watching you. And if you are not big brother, and the, if you're not screaming loud enough or you don't have enough passion, then they just come pluck you out and you're gone. That's exactly right. And it feels like this is very, very similar.

Claire Fox [00:39:52] I think that's really right. I mean, I, I I do, you know, 1984 is a fantastic novel or well, was spot on, but you know, when I've read it over the years, you can see trends going in that direction. Now I feel like he's understated. I mean, he's describing reality. I mean, it's not a dystopian future. He's describing the world we live in, isn't he? I mean, you are absolutely right. That's why at the moment people keep saying, oh my God, in 1984 it says this. I mean that two minutes of hate, you could see that that might be where it would end up, but you sort of, it was a, it was exaggerated for effect. To give you a warning, now we live through those two minutes of hate as a, as a a, a kind of norm. I mean, it's the normal thing that happens. And it's not just on social media, sadly, and actually on campuses, you've seen this, American campuses, there's, there's endless examples of literally students screaming at academics. The, the screaming around the statues, I mean the statue topping in, in the us which has got completely out of hand. But they're not just saying, remove that statue, please. It's like a kind of frenzy and violence. I mean, it's against an inanimate object. And you think, why are you getting so frenzied about a statue of Christopher Columbus? But it's, it takes on this kind of re and that's the kind of religious, it's like a religious frenzy. It's like, wow, you know, you talk about pent up rage and it's, it is not so your friends who say, oh, it's a passing phase.

Claire Fox [00:41:32] Well, I mean that, you know, if we don't all force a debate, that's what I want. I want to force a debate. Something extraordinary has happened in America over the last 48 hours, which is a group of mo you know, a a, there was a letter printed in Harper's, a fairly moderate letter saying, can we have civil discussion and come together, and this is very divisive and we need free speech and 150 of the great. And the goods signed it. And it was quite broad in terms of across different lines. And I noticed it because I've launched something with some of the people here called Don't Divide Us, which is similar, although a more rank and file version. Ours is kind of like ordinary people saying it. But this was, anyway, the great and the good Harpers publish it in the last 12 hours. The people who've signed it are being hounded. Some of them have retracted already. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:42:25] Really?

Claire Fox [00:42:26] Yeah. Several have retracted because they're, because because they're being accused of being on the list of names with people that they don't agree with. And the big bete noire at the moment is JK Rowling. JK Rowling unbelievably has become the devil incarnate in woke circles because she's accused of being a trans phobe. And

Vance Crowe [00:42:48] Translate, gimme the background on this because I see it, it, it makes very little sense to me, and so I just kind of stay away from it. But what is, what is all that around what, how did she get embroiled in this? What happened?

Claire Fox [00:43:00] Yeah, God knows, but because I suppose the Exactly, it's very hard to explain, isn't it? Because quite actually in the UK anyway, they, the, the government and a conservative government at that tried to bring in self-identification, which is that basically you could just proclaim that you are a woman or a man if you were biologically born into the other sex. And this self-identification has led to a certain amount of chaos on certainly the, the aim of it. So it started to be that, because then what would happen was you could proclaim, you could say that you are a woman, I can't argue against you. And then, because then I'm trying. So if you just said to me, now I'm a woman, I have to now call you she and her and accept that. And that is very different than you struggling with what gender you are and going for, you know, medical intervention or talking it through or thinking about it. But this is just like a self proclamation. The problem then is, is that if you declare that you are a woman, I might say, well, okay, maybe you're a trans woman, but you're not a woman. And you know that, that, by the way, me saying that will get me canceled. I've said it before, but you've got to say that trans women, somebody who proclaims that they are a woman, is a woman. And so obviously for a lot of feminists, this is unacceptable. So the feminist movement is now split because that means that, for example, you could, if you got arrested tomorrow, you could say, well, I'm a woman so I demand, I go into a women's jail.

Claire Fox [00:44:38] And so there's been instances where people have been arrested as rapists, but they proclaim themselves as women and have gone into a woman's jail. I mean, if you can get your head around that. And then there's women's refugees, which are women only, but now women is if trans. So it's a complicated story. And even so, I have a number of friends who are trans, and I don't just say that as cover because of what I just said, but because not everybody who is transitioned to another sex agrees with this orthodoxy. Right? They don't, you know, people who have transitioned don't necessarily adopt this very narrow, particularly prescriptive, hysterical of approach. They call themselves trans women, not women. But anyway, JK Rowling famous author, you know, multimillionaire because she created, I can't remember what

Vance Crowe [00:45:35] Harry Potter,

Claire Fox [00:45:36] It's called Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry Potter, yeah, yeah. She's a creative, yeah, Harry Potter, I mean untouchable, you know, lefty feminist, you know, loved by everyone. National treasure, internationally renowned multimillionaire, I assume because of the success of her books and the films and so on. She came out and said, well, I think that a woman is a woman and a trans woman is not a woman, and a woman is a biological entity, and you cannot just proclaim that you can be a woman. So she is now considered to be a transphobic bigot. And she has not backed down on several attempts to get her to back down. Some people resigned from her publishers, either authors, because they said they wouldn't, didn't wanna be published by the safe. The publishers in that instance held their nerve and said, well, you go and get published somewhere else then, which was quite funny. 'cause I do think the publishers probably thought she enters a fair bit of money, no disrespect, but your minor authors on our list, you go off. But anyway, whatever they, but, but there's been attempts. So she's, JK Rowling is canceled. JK Rowling signed the letter in the, in Harper's. And that's one of the reasons why. Now some of the people are retracting, but you know, Noam Chomsky's on there. But then Bari Weiss, and you know, so there's kind of a left right mix on there. And so people are saying, well, if I'd have, when I signed the letter, if I'd have known that JK Rowling was on the letter, well, it's like, well, what's that gotta do with it?

Claire Fox [00:47:08] I mean, you read the letter, did you agree with the letter? And the letter is about a challenge to cancel culture. So is this so ironic that this letter in America is now the subject of cancel culture and people who sign it are being hounded and demonized. So

Vance Crowe [00:47:26] In that, and what is the way, like, it's such an interesting thing because what do you do if, if you're targeted, does this mean that anybody that works for someone else, which everybody works for somebody at some level, right? Yeah. That, that we're, is it that the people that have money needs to make the decisions that they're not gonna back down to it? Is it like, it's so complicated because it does feel like if you push this hard enough, it does become about power. And like when debates become about power, they're not about the ideas. They're about who's strongest. And then we get into really dangerous places because eventually the people with the power, when they feel it being threatened, being threatened will react.

Claire Fox [00:48:08] Well, I do think that probably in a lot of issues politically over the last few years, there is a majority of people in society who just think the world's gone mad and don't agree with it. And I think that we do have to talk to those people. I mean, first of all, the danger of not doing that will force people to, into extremes. I mean, I've been concerned to myself that if you have let people constantly say that to accept, I mean, I I if you champion Martin Luther King and saying that what's important is somebody's character and not their skin color, that is now considered to be racist, by the way, that is a denial of race. I mean, how did that happen? But I do think most people think that. And the danger is if you force people to say the most important thing about them is that they're white or whatever their ethnicity, but it, you will create a white nationalist movement. You will fuel the, the, the very forces that are actually a small group. But the alt-right, the, the, the, the white, the white separatists, they do exist. They're small, but they're beginning to, you know, have an influence because people are forced. You're not allowed to be just, I mean, these are immutable. I mean, we, it's not being white isn't an achievement. We're just born white. We are born black, we are born, whatever color we are, these are things about us. They are the least significant things in our lives, of course.

Claire Fox [00:49:40] And I understand that if you are subject to being treated unequally because of your skin color, if for example, you are black and in parts of America, historically you were treated like an animal or like a second class citizen 'cause of your skin color. But that's what we want to overcome. We want to transcend that. But that is no longer the aim of identity politics. It wants to keep people in their ethnicities as saying that's the dominant feature. Anyway, I still think the majority of people who are black hate all this stuff. The majority of people who are white hate all this stuff. They're not extreme on either side and they need leadership. So you say what happens is, I think that the people, I think intellectual leaders, political leaders need to speak out and talk to the vast majority of people and, you know, make it clear that this terrible explosion of hatred that the two minutes hate that's turning into months of hate is a smallish group of people. And we shouldn't bow down to it. I'm not saying it's an easy task that, but that's the way I see it, that there is a moderate civil commitment to free speech and open debate that needs to be fought for.

Vance Crowe [00:50:57] It may be a Rorschach test a little bit for me, but I don't know if you saw on the news, but in the United States on the 4th of July, I have never seen so many fireworks in my life in my neighborhood, which normally is just like a really calm bunch of kids all around. So people don't, they normally have sparklers and little pop rocks, but this year there were people doing aerial demonstrations that must have cost them thousands of dollars. And and part of it could be that they were just tired of being locked up, but a lot of it felt like they didn't care about the rules anymore because the rules didn't care about them. And that's what it, that's what it felt like. And, and I heard from people all over the country that that's what happened.

Claire Fox [00:51:37] I suspect that's true. I think that's, I thought the same. I thought it was a demonstration of a demonstrate a kind of, not a demonstration, but an a, a, a visible way of saying, actually, we don't hate America. We don't think we are racist scum. We don't think that we, we don't want to go along with all this. It's not all like that, you know, you know what's happening in Portland and Atlanta and some of these things that are going on, you know, that's not us. Right. And I think that I thought exactly the same. I think that's exactly what it was. I mean, I we're speculating, but I felt the same.

Vance Crowe [00:52:12] Let's, let's talk a little bit about like why people are drawn to some of the ideas. Like, I actually don't know anybody that would describe themselves as a Marxist or that at one point they were, what was, what was drawing to those ideas and or maybe what is still drawing to those ideas for you?

Claire Fox [00:52:31] Well, I mean, I, I, I actually, I thought that, I mean, it really was like, I was a typical lefty student and it really was a long time ago. But I, I don't mean to, I, I still consider myself, I suppose on the left, really, I didn't think that capitalism worked well enough. In other words, I thought that it wasn't productive enough. And I thought in the end it didn't allow enough people to benefit from economic development and growth. I mean, that would be the simplest way of saying it. And I didn't think, therefore, I thought the market wasn't the most rational way of organizing distribution and or production. So, you know, that's a kind of lot of emotion about what Marxism is usually kind of ill forms and it's like a, you know, philosophical outlook that, that's associated with that, that's got some depth to it. I can't do credit to, but I, but I think that I, I did also in this country, I suppose I was also supportive of the trade unions during the, the minor strike. I thought that the attempt by Margaret Thatcher to smash the, the, the coal miners and the strikes. You know, that was a very big dividing line in, in society. And I was on, you know, from a working class background, I had no notion of being part of the Conservative party, which was an establishment party very much in those days. Maybe less so now was associating with representing the bosses and the posh people and all that.

Claire Fox [00:54:07] You know, you could see I would be more drawn to the left. And I always thought the Labor Party was utterly useless in this country, so I never had much to do with them. So, and a lot of people were involved in radical equity politics when I was at college, and I carried on doing that. So, you know, I think people are drawn to different ideas and different reasons, and it's not always, but I do think that those times have changed, by the way. And when LM magazine, which was not Living Marxism, and the one that I started, it was, you know, after the end of the Cold War, and, you know, it really was like, these, this left right labels don't work in the same way. So I've always been very fra, pro-freedom and pro-free speech, which people often say, oh, I can't understand anyone on the left. But actually there's a tradition of that on the left as well. I, I, I'm, I'm I, the big things for me are agency that people can make their own history, make their own lives, self create, you know, that, that, that, and that's part of enlightenment thinking that always appealed to me. And, and that's again, got a traditional left, but I don't, I now don't feel as though the left right thing works. I suppose I'm more, people call me a libertarian, but a left wing libertarian. But I, I've now, I now kind of don't even know how to describe myself. And so I just think, I try and say, well, what do I think of this idea? You know? And I try and read widely and think about things rather than worrying what labels people give me, apart from when they try and delegitimize me by calling me a bigot, which is what people do now, to, to try and stop that.

Claire Fox [00:55:45] I, I'll fight against that, but they can call me anything after that. So a lot of people will say, I am right wing now, even though I don't consider myself to be right wing, but I mean, it's not as though in this country anyway, that you can describe exactly what the conservative right is because they're all split over things as well. You know what I mean? So it's, it, it's, it's quite a difficult, going into the details of it that happened recently was Brexit. And I, I I, there's always been a long tradition on the left actually of arguing to leave the European Union because it was anti-democratic and imposition from outside, against popular sovereignty and national sovereignty. And I, I just voted leave. I didn't think it was a big deal. I didn't think leave was gonna win necessarily. And then when leave won The way that, you know, people from all of the political parties kind of united against say they were gonna overturn the vote, then politicized things even more. Right? And so suddenly I became very, I I myself, even in my, these later years, you know, I was so outraged that they would being so anti-democratic, I couldn't believe it. And that, but that split the country. And what I was gonna say was, you, you would find yourself, and often people would, you know, I'd be in meetings around Brexit, where, and I remember this one really well, where one guy said, you know, I, I'm a trade union activist, and I've never met a conservative before. And another woman saying, well, I'm a conservative counselor and I'm now gonna vote for the Brexit party in that instance, and I've never met a trade unionist before, and there was people from different ethnicities, people from different backgrounds, and we were on the leave side, the Brexit side.

Claire Fox [00:57:30] And so suddenly you felt like those old divisions were no longer the important ones, right? And, and so I think that's an interesting, and you, you, you can see the shakeup in American politics. I mean, what everyone thinks about Donald Trump, he's certainly not your typical Republican, right? That was a big shakeup of the Republican Party and the Democrats,

Vance Crowe [00:57:52] Who

Claire Fox [00:57:52] Knows what they represent, but you know, is it Bernie Sanders or not? I mean, I know he is not got the, I know he's not standing, but what I mean is does he represent, is it, is it a OC? What is it? Yeah, I mean, like, there's a Democrat anymore, right? We don't know. Do we, do

Vance Crowe [00:58:06] I I think one of the things that I don't hear talked about right now as far as the political, I'm totally with you, that, that the definitions that used to be right and left, they don't work anymore. But when you look at the political scene, at least the, the presidential scene, we're putting up people that are almost 80 years old. Like we scoured the whole country, and the only people we could find were in their eighties. I'm not against people that are older and wiser and, and have vigor and can do it, but in some regards, it appears to me that you're talking about the old and instantiated system versus anything else. That isn't what we've done for the last 30 years. And I have a, a real hesitance about making lots of political change really fast, because then you see the divisions that come out in something like Brexit, right? That was so jarring to people that everybody had to scatter and choose new sides, but nothing about that is stable or inherently safe. But I think that, that, I, I wonder when the age divide in the US starts being exploited, or at least brought up in the same way that race and gender and sexuality all has been.

Claire Fox [00:59:15] Well, I think that partly there is a, a, a generational divide of some sort. And I do think that that's one of the nerve wracking aspects of the present culture was because, you know, it is largely young people. I, we talked about the corporates, but, but you know, young people see this as their moment. But I do think class is very important. And you saw that with Trump, and we saw that with Brexit here, which was, you know, people would say all young people support staying in the European Union. Whereas I saw it differently. I mean, the majority of young people did support that, but the majority of young working class people didn't, if you Sure what I mean. And a th and a third, by the way, of, of people from different ethnic groups voted to leave the European Union third, even though they tried to say everyone who was Brexit was racist. So you've got all these kind of mixers. But I do think that there is a generational issue in as much as I don't feel as though the political parties represent new blood. It's not just that you've got old leaders, but even here, I feel like, I feel as though those, these are the parties of the past in a way. And you can see it. I mean, he, you know, all around Europe, not, not just around Europe, but in Europe, anyway, you know, you've got, Macron is now not from a pa, a traditional party. I mean, he's, he's kind of like representing the establishment, but he's, he's just, everything's fracturing. All of the old parties are falling apart. The social Democrats, the conservatives in every country are struggling.

Claire Fox [01:00:49] So there's an an end of an old era, and the, the reemergence of a new one not, has not happened. And so what you can then get is a kind of moment like now where you can have leaders who will emerge around things like culture wars and identity politics to fill the absence of leadership politically. You see what I mean? So there's a, there's a, basically there's a, a vacuum. And I, so I don't think this is, I don't think they are the new political parties, it's more that they're, they've rushed in as, as you know, nature reports a vacuum and all the rest, because the political parties are not to it.

Vance Crowe [01:01:26] Yeah. And I think that that's, that's the, the space where you get really unstable, you know, the trotskyites who, who usher in a new wave of political thinking, and then you have the linens and solemness that say, Hey, thanks for paving the way. We're just gonna knock all you guys out, kill you all, and take the power. And that's, that's the situation that you run into. There may be people that have empathy pouring out of every one of their pores, and they're just really concerned about the plight of other people. But what they don't realize is once you open up this gate, then force becomes really like actual power. And the use of violence can be used to transform party, and it can happen in the matter of weeks. Like it can happen quick. Yeah.

Claire Fox [01:02:08] Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I, I felt you, you, you mentioned earlier about civil war. This is quite dramatic story stuff, isn't it? But when Brexit nearly wasn't delivered, regardless of whether you liked it or not, you, you have to understand the, the bitterness of people who felt that they voted in good faith. And then, and then there was this attempt at stopping it, and people voted for change. They wanted to leave the European Union, but it became to represent them taking back control, ordinary people, having some control over their destiny in their lives, shaking up rich politics and so on. And then suddenly all these people try and stop it, you know, who are in power and, and it's created great bitterness. But the, but the, the main thing I was gonna say was the antagonism was so great, so intense, so bitter that people used to say to me before, before eventually the, the last election, you know, I never knew why there would, what civil war would feel like. And now I do. I mean, it was so vicious. It was a vicious mood. People could, families were splitting. And I think that you can see, you can feel that at the moment as well. I mean, we are in an extraordinary position because of lockdown, that, that intensifies everything. That doesn't help or not, not everyone's locked down, but it's not normal. You know, you're not, I'm not living a normal life, right? I, I, I, I am living this peculiar life. I kind of went out to meet someone face to face today, and I thought, oh, this is, this is quite novel.

Claire Fox [01:03:39] You know what I mean? And I, and I suddenly rea and I had a really great conversation with them, and I thought, I'm not doing this that much now. I'm just, I'm not, I I'm not, I'm just not socially engaged in the same way. And I'm, I, and I am quite socially engaged, but you know, for a lot of people, they've just not left their house for months and the normal sort of interaction. So it's intensified by that. But there is like a kind of civil war, this nasty atmosphere underneath, and people, if you're frightened to speak, and there's this sort of overwhelming sense of fury and hate, people get scared. It does feel scary. And, and, and so I think that, you know, I, I set myself the task, even though I'm pretty obviously on one side of this culture war in as much as I hate identity politics and I'm not, where can I go against it? Because I'm from the left, I'm an anti-racist and I fought for women's, you know, equality. And I kind of, you know, from that tradition, I feel that at least I can try and try and calm things down a bit or try keep it down, keep it civil, keep things contained. Not, not hide them, but try and diffuse some of it. And that's what I've tried, what we've tried to do in terms of the debates we're organizing what I've personally done in terms of broadcasting and so on. I've written quite a lot of articles just saying, look, we've just got to take a step back from this. We can't just keep rushing towards this. So that's what, but it's, it's not, it's a scary moment.

Claire Fox [01:05:11] I think historically,

Vance Crowe [01:05:12] You know, I think there's a really important place for the people that were a part of. The movements that were before, like you were talking about the, the women's equality or, or feminism. I have a good friend that when she started talking about being a part of the feminist movement, she's in her late fifties or so, early sixties, I, I was a little bit, I was kind of scoffing her in my mind. And then I was like, wait a second, this is somebody you like and you trust and is somebody that works hard, listen to what she's saying. And you begin to realize like, my kickback on what's going on now starts to shade a period of time that I knew nothing about. And so you, like, it's very important that the women that fought for equal rights come back and remind 'em, like, Hey everybody, it really was really pretty bad here and we made these changes and these were changes that were good, but we're seeing things go further than I or the movement wanted. Just so everybody knows they're not one in the same thing. They're different things.

Claire Fox [01:06:11] That's right. And that's very important. I think, you know, on the race question, on the women's question, all of these things, there were massive changes made. You know, when my parents came to the UK from Ireland, when they, they moved to, to Britain, you know, there really was pictures in the, in the, the windows that said, no blacks, no Irish, no dogs. And I remember my parents telling me this, and they, my mom said, you know, for two years after they arrived, she kind of didn't like speaking out loud because people would hear her accent. And of course, if you are black, you can't hide that. You are black. There was prejudice, open, explicit prejudice, you know, in this country, in the uk. Anyway, I, when I was, you know, in my twenties and thirties, the police did target young black people. They did. That was what they did, right? And, but the, and there was racist attacks all the time. Organized attacks against Asian families by racists, who call themselves racist. I mean, there was no ambi. They said, go home, you so and so and so and so, they did firebomb houses. So those of us who fought against that bigotry, things have improved enormously. You know, when women were, you know, I expected to do nothing. You know, who are you gonna marry? You know, that was your fulfillment. You know, who, who would, what kind of guy can you marry to, to fulfill yourself? You know, no expectation you'd have a career.

Claire Fox [01:07:42] All of these things, all of these things historically and in recent history, in recent history. But then we won a lot of those battles. I don't mean we won all of them, but we did win some of them. So now it's so galling to be told that things have got worse than they've ever been. And that, you know, racism in this country's as bad as slavery. It's like, no, it isn't. It's not even as bad as the 1980s, right? It's not, we are not talking about that at all. Right? And so you, but I can understand that now, even I from that tradition, when somebody says I'm an anti-racist feminist, I feel like running out the room. 'cause I think, oh my God, they'll be bringing in censorship or they'll be done. Because these, the movements that I was part of have been completely hijacked by identity politics. And I, I keep saying identity politics, this is important. 'cause what it says is, you know, I just have to say to you, we're having this conversation, I just have to say to you, as a woman, I find that offensive, right? And that's it. That's meant to shut you up. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:08:48] And what the hell am I gonna say to that? Right? I'm not gonna be like, Hey, toughen up. Or you're strong. Like I, the other day I was on Twitter and I saw a woman who was interacting with the Texas Farm Bureau. Now you're from the UK and you can even say, that's probably a pretty tough place for a woman, right? So she was saying, Hey, it's kind of hard to break into this old boys network. And I was, and I wrote her on Twitter, 'cause she's a friend of mine. I was like, Hey, don't worry. Like you kick ass. You can take it basically saying if anybody could, could march to this old boys network, like it can be you. She was fine with it. But I got so much hate for, for me saying like, Hey, you're, you're one of the toughest people I know. You kick ass da da da. So I guess my lesson outta that was, if it has anything to do with two x chromosomes, better not say anything. Don't compliment somebody. Don't give 'em a word of encouragement. Don't, don't do any of that, because that's all danger. And then that becomes the equivalent of not going out and seeing people, the equivalent of wearing a mask every time you interact with them, because you're putting up a facade where you have thoughts that are supportive of them, but you're too afraid to say them because of the way that culture has manifested.

Claire Fox [01:09:58] Exactly. And that's what, and it gets narrower and narrower, doesn't it? So, you know, you can't say, you, you, you know, if you feel that, if you say something about lesbian and gay liberation inequality, that someone's, you're gonna say the wrong thing. That someone's gonna accuse you of being homophobic. You say, okay, I won't say anything, you know, if, if the only, if, if, if, and so on. So what happens is you get, you withdraw into a narrower sphere. And we're all, I mean, I, you know, one of the, the slogans again, of the Battle of Ideas festival has been get out of your echo chamber. And we were saying it before it was fashionable, but actually we we're now going, we are being forced into smaller echo chambers. We are being, you know, we kind of lampoon, or I certainly do, or, you know, safe spaces where you just feel comfortable and you think, how can students at 18 demand safe spaces where they feel safe? You know, you are meant to be 18 and

Vance Crowe [01:10:53] Fighting and arguing and

Claire Fox [01:10:55] Like,

Vance Crowe [01:10:56] Did you see how dumb that person

Claire Fox [01:10:58] I know. And you definitely don't wanna be kind of like hiding away saying, I don't want to hear any views that I might, that might disturb me. Because actually it's the very exciting time when you are encountering all these exciting new views. But anyway, that's kind of, but actually we're all being forced into because we're actually frightened to say as we speak, as we, as we see, you know, and there's nothing more corrupting of a society when everybody thinks the emperor's got new, clo got no clothes on and can't say it. I mean, if you are, if you are standing there and, and, and we all know, and you can't say it, so you just retreat and retreat and it's, it's a silencing. It's a very, very, and it, and it's demoralizing, but it also means how will we ever get anything done? I don't want, I wanna be able to, or I, you know, I, I wanna be able to say to you, I agree with you on this. Let's, let's work together on doing this. But I disagree with you on lots of other things, but who cares, right? I don't wanna have to check everything you've ever thought and check your social media feeds in case somebody thinks that because I'm talking to you, that means I agree with you on something else. I want you to be able to frankly say to me, this is rubbish that you said that. I mean, that's the way you honor people, right? I mean, if somebody flatters you all the time, you know that they're lying. I mean, you know, the people who are closest to me are the most critical. That's good, isn't it? They will say, look, Claire, you know, on the tally the night on afterwards, right? Or you didn't explain that well, or that's how you learn.

Claire Fox [01:12:29] That's how we all learn. And that means they were listening to me. They weren't just kind of tick boxing. Yeah, very good, very good. They were actually taking me seriously. And that's the way we honor each other. By, by, by listening. We don't, if somebody says something you don't agree with, you say, I don't agree with you on that, and that's fine. But that is what, that's how we all learn. That is the thing. We take each other and our style seriously by critiquing each other that is effectively being banned in this country at the moment. And well, and in America. And we are never gonna, I mean, how we think we're gonna innovate scientifically or with anything, if everyone is frightened to speak or frightened to say the wrong thing, even in terms of business and innovation and scientific discovery, people will be hemmed in and will play safe, and will never take risks and never communicate with people in case it upsets them. That's not gonna lead to great inventions and exciting dynamic societies.

Vance Crowe [01:13:25] I I love that idea that listening to somebody and giving them feedback is honoring them because I think it's a hundred percent true. The people I don't care about, I don't give them feedback about how they did or what they could do to get better. It's the people that I'm like, Hey, I see potential in you, or I see that you could be greater than you are right now, and I'm gonna tell that to you. And, and when we don't do that, when we remove it from society, because I'm afraid that if you don't like what I say, you will end my career. That's, that's terrible. So Claire, I wanna finish off just talking a little bit about the battle of ideas, because I think that there are people all over the world, like the ag community. So we became in contact because Monsanto went around and they were like, Hey, we need a space where we can talk about our perspective. And everywhere we go, people tell us, no. And you could bring stacks of money, you could bring experts, you could bring whatever you wanted. And people would be like, Nope. And I remember the sensation of coming to you and having you say, we'll give you a platform to talk, but it's not gonna be about what you necessarily wanna talk about. We're gonna create a conversation that forces you to think about things. And I, I just remember being like, thank God this is here, thank God. Because whether Monsanto is right or wrong, everyone is better served for having seen a debate around that. So what is the future of the battle of ideas? And if people are listening to this, what can they do to support it so that it can go the distance?

Claire Fox [01:14:54] Yeah, thank you for for asking that because it, it's always been difficult, but there's two challenges that we have. So we've always, we've never received state support from the UK because we are not, we never ticked enough boxes to be able to get that kind of government money, which in the UK that's how a lot of these kind of organizations work. And you can imagine having heard me, that we are not going to be getting any of the corporate money that they're giving out to matters like that. But it's also the case that over recent years, the corporate sector has, I think, become increasingly risk averse and has also become more politically correct. And so when we've, we, we've always depended on lively corporate support for our work. Not because they, as, as you noted, not because they were able to demand a platform from us, but we said, well, we're interested in engineering. You're a big engineering company. If it was an engineering company, you know, we, because we believe in having these discussions 'cause we really want to see the economy develop and we think there's real challenges, et cetera, et cetera. So whoever you are in alcohol companies, engineering companies, whatever. And of course the agricultural sector is one of the big things for us because we've always been very enthusiastic about modernizing agriculture. We think that there's far too much sentimentality about small farm and you know, food reduction is essential for starting even forward, all of these things. So we go and try and get corporate sponsorship and we are not getting very much of it at the moment.

Claire Fox [01:16:28] Like none. Partly because of the uncertainties created by Coronavirus. Of course a lot of the corporate sector is now stymied and worried and not investing in things like sponsorship. And secondly, because they've become preoccupied with sponsoring events and, and individuals who maybe are safer. So we think that the battle of ideas is, it's not like the riskiest thing. It's like, do you think that ideas matter and debate should be had? And if you can give us some financial support, that would be great, because I did say before we started filming that we can last till the end of the year, but we haven't got any reserves. So we've just about, I've just about kept my small team of six going through the, the, the, the government offered here to pay people's wages if you sack them, that sack them, laid them off. But I decided not to do that because I felt that it was important. We carried on, on principle, having the debates. And so we never took that money. We never took the furloughed money.

Vance Crowe [01:17:31] Hell yeah, hell yeah.

Claire Fox [01:17:33] That just means that I've run outta money. So what that means is that, what that means is that we're going to have the Battle of Ideas Festival. We're gonna try and do two live events before the end of the year in Buckingham University and in Buxton Dome in the north of England, in Do in in Midlands. We're gonna have the big festival in as soon as we can physically get everyone together, we hope January and February. And we need sponsors and supporters and people who want to help us out. So if any of y'all listeners are in a position to do that, you would be, I hope making a good contribution to a, a more enlightened society in which censorship is not the norm. And in which civilized debate and listening to each other and debating with each other is really given the kind of platform it needs. I, I, I think this is, we're in urgently desperate need of more battle of ideas festivals all over the world, and we don't wanna lose the one that exists.

Vance Crowe [01:18:32] So I think, so I, I I can tell you that not, not only the one that we went to the barbecue, where's this giant conference? And there's things everywhere. You held one in East Berlin where I had a chance to go. And it was about Martin Luther and it happened to be on the 500th birthday of him nailing the 95 theses to the wall. So I'm at this con, I'm at this like little theater and there's maybe 50, a hundred people in the audience. And the guy down at the bottom that's speaking with another person is talking about how Martin Luther was actually a genocidal maniac and, you know, we shouldn't like him at all. And then another person having a completely different point of view. And my mind smashed into a wall because I had, I, I was like, I didn't even know there was anybody that didn't like think Martin Luther was great and that this was just obvious progress. And I think about how many things in my life that that changed, that something that I thought was so fundamental, Martin Luther, his 95 theses to the wall, everybody knows this is good. When you look at that from another angle and you see something is different about something you thought was fundamental to who we are as a civilization, then you start saying, what else can I go take a look at where I shift the angle and literally the only place on earth that I know to do this is what you're doing. So if there's anything we can do to support this, I'll advertise your events, I'll talk about it, I'll bring you on, whatever I can do. 'cause I think this may be one of the most important things in, in the world right now.

Claire Fox [01:20:04] And I, and I think just Monsanto's a really good example of that, by the way, because, you know, in order, I, I know you're not there now, but when Monsanto,

Vance Crowe [01:20:14] Well, they're not there anymore. They're gone.

Claire Fox [01:20:15] They're not there now. No. It's Bayer. And, and Bayer did support us for a while, but then that stopped. But anyway, but when Monsanto, when we took the Monsanto once, we got a lot of stick for that. But the, but the thing I was gonna say was, you know, what you wanna say to people is Monsanto, at the time I'll bear, but Monsanto is, you know, you might hate Monsanto, but they are a very important company that are doing very big things right? And, and you need to, you can't just demonize them. You need to talk to them. And I wanted to say to Monsanto, you can't just get away with throwing corporate power around and putting up a banner and hoping that you are gonna kind of have an easy ride, right? You are powerful people and you wanna justify why you are doing this on GMOs. Come and argue it. Right? Or whatever. It's, and, and I think that's the way we should treat each other, which is there's no good guys or bad guys in a straightforward way like this, right? We need to be open. If we're gonna take things forward, we need to be able to say and we'll learn things that we didn't know. Because one of the other things about the battle of is we do have small events throughout the UK and small events throughout Europe as well, as well as this big festival. And we do try and do it throughout the year at some level, even though the, the, the sort of big festival focus is in the autumn. So I really would like yeah, to encourage people also to think about, you know, can we have debates in our local area? Can we be doing this kind of thing? You know, we should be hearing from people. We wouldn't, you know, people who just listened to me. If they have done, and probably your audience maybe thinks, my God, I've just had an hour of listening to a Marxist, right?

Claire Fox [01:21:46] This isn't,

Vance Crowe [01:21:48] And they're sitting in their track right now, maybe,

Claire Fox [01:21:50] And maybe, exactly. And maybe it's not so frightening, you know, and maybe it's not so, or you know who thought that, right? Because these labels don't always work. And that's what's interesting about them. That's what makes it interesting. That's what makes us as humans interesting. So we've all got things to learn.

Vance Crowe [01:22:09] Well, Claire Fox, you are one of my favorite people in the world. I think you are an important person. If somebody wanted to find you on Twitter, what would they, what would they look up?

Claire Fox [01:22:19] So it's Fox Claire. So Fox Claire, and it's C-L-A-I-R-E. And I'm very active on Twitter.

Vance Crowe [01:22:29] Oh yeah. That's my, my audience loves the Twitter. So yeah,

Claire Fox [01:22:32] I, I, I, I have to say, I have to say that me on Twitter, I, it is a, especially since lockdown, I've become like a child, like a teenager, always on Twitter. But yeah, no, follow me on Twitter. I'll follow you back. Start a conversation. I love all that. That's great.

Vance Crowe [01:22:49] Amen.

Claire Fox [01:22:50] And you'll let me know when this is out and I can tweet it out to everyone. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:22:54] It'll be out this afternoon. I don't make my audience wait. Oh, right. So we'll just chop it and throw it. So

Claire Fox [01:22:59] Brilliant talk.

Vance Crowe [01:22:59] Well, thank you Claire, so much talk to, this is great.

Claire Fox [01:23:02] Next time you're in the uk we're actually going for a pint in a pub.

Vance Crowe [01:23:06] Amen. I

Claire Fox [01:23:06] Love it. Take care. Bye-bye.

Vance Crowe [01:23:08] Well, that's gonna do it for this week's interview with Claire Fox. I hope you enjoyed this. This is one of those conversations that can only happen because I had a chance to go out and meet all of these people throughout my life and I've stayed in contact with them over the years. So I hope that you are doing that with your connections to whoever you meet along the way. Somebody that interests you, somebody that you admire, make sure you're writing down their name, you're staying in contact with them because then when a moment like today comes up, you can write somebody like Claire Fox and say, Hey, why don't you come on and explain to me how you view the world, how you view it from the other side of the ocean, how you view it from being somebody that was a Marxist, as a woman that fought for feminist rights. All of these things can happen if you meet people, admire them, stay in touch with them and then call them when you need them. So I hope that you're thinking about that for yourself. Also, at the beginning of this podcast, I mentioned the Telepresence Professional Basics class. I hope you'll go check that out. It is a really interesting class. Everyone that has taken it, and I now have, I think somewhere along the lines of 50 people having taken it. It's an exciting course. It's one that people really find that it's done them a lot of good. And I'm excited for you to take it. So check out the link below and the discount code for $10 off for podcast listeners. Thanks so much. And I should be back maybe tomorrow with another interview.