UK Baroness Explains Why Hate Speech Laws Make Free Speech Worse

Claire Fox [00:00:00] You are kind of shocked that under the surface there is this visceral venom aimed at not just Israel as the Jewish state, but the Jewish people and Jewish people living in the uk. Anyone who's Jewish,

Listener intro (station ID) [00:00:15] I'm Bryan Moes, a farmer living in Florence, South Dakota, and you're listening to the Vance Crowe podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:25] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We welcome back Baroness Claire Fox, who is a member of the House of Lords, and probably even more importantly overseas, the Battle of Ideas, which is a gigantic debate program that brings together thousands of people in the heart of London to debate some of the most controversial topics in the world going on. I actually met Claire because back when I was working as the director of millennial engagement for Monsanto, I really wanted to participate in that. I wanted a chance to be on a panel and talk about GMOs and pesticides and of all the people that denied me an opportunity to come speak at their different events. Claire was actually really big on it. She brought us in, she put together other people that had really different points of view and it was fantastic. I have always loved debate. I think it is one of the most important things and what you're gonna hear in this conversation is Claire describing the nuances. Certainly it's one thing to say, oh, I believe in free speech, but what happens when that free speech encounters two different cultures battling over things that are, that where people are literally at war, like Palestine and Israel, talking about things like what's going on with Hamas and Radical Islam cancel culture, all these things that we hear about in the news and people talk about a lot, but very few people have the level of knowledge and expertise and really getting into it and actually dealing with the problems of free speech.

Vance Crowe [00:02:00] So we're gonna get to that interview in just a moment. But if you're a long time listening to the podcast, you know that I conduct Legacy Interviews. We started off actually in this room that I'm at right now. I'm broke out the old studio to be able to talk with Baroness Fox this morning. But now I have a full studio in St. Louis, Missouri, where I sit down with individuals and couples to record their lifetimes of stories. And these stories are designed to be passed down to future generations. If you're interested in having me sit down with either you or a loved one to capture their stories, their childhood, their career, their marriage, parenting, and the wisdom that they wanna leave behind, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. And I know it's crazy. It's the middle of, or the end of October and we're talking about Christmas, but Christmas is on the way. And if you have been thinking about doing something special for your family, if you would like to have the legacy interview back, you need to do, do the interview before December 1st to ensure that we can get your interview back to your family member on time. We have a huge list of of interviews that we have coming up, so they're very limited time slots. If this is something you've been thinking about doing, whether it's inner studio in St. Louis or online, then go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more and to sign your loved one up to do an interview so that you could watch that video over the Christmas holiday with your whole family. This is a really heartwarming experience. We get letters all the time from the children of people that have done the interviews to say how enjoyable and how fulfilling and how grateful they are to have those interviews and to be able to watch them with the family.

Vance Crowe [00:03:40] So we're gonna go to the interview with Claire Fox and we'll be back next week with another interview. Claire Fox, welcome back to the podcast.

Claire Fox [00:03:49] It's great to be with you.

Vance Crowe [00:03:50] So I was watching on YouTube the other day and a clip of you in the House of Lords comes up and it is not the usual speech about Israel and Palestine, it ends up being a speech about not wanting to create more hate crime laws. So what is going on in the UK that that's the direction you took this talk at a, at a pretty pivotal time in world history?

Claire Fox [00:04:14] So I want to be clear that I spent most of the talk discussing most of my speech and the conflict discussing the rise of antisemitism in the uk, some of the really pernicious and unchallenged antisemitism that we're seeing on university campuses. And actually alongside that, the rise of radical Islamist thinking, which has been going unchecked in the UK for some time. And then every week since the October the seventh pogrom, 'cause that's what it was. There's been huge demonstrations on the streets of London in which hundreds of thousands of people have been going out and demanding humanitarian support for Gaza and the people of Gaza and Palestinians. And alongside that, some people calling for jihad and all sorts of things and their whole atmosphere has been pretty toxic. And the temptation then is that you just want to clamp down on it. You know, you are seeing or hearing views that are really unpalatable, very dangerous in in many ways you are kind of shocked that under the surface there is this visceral venom aimed at not just Israel as the Jewish state, but the Jewish people and Jewish people living in the uk. Anyone who's Jewish, you immediately think what we need now is more laws.

Claire Fox [00:05:50] The problem is that the last thing we need now is to start having hate crime legislation enhanced because that's going to damage what we stand for, which is those of us who believe in freedom and a free society and liberal values. We need to defend that more than ever. I also think it's a bit of a cheat because what's happened is, is that you realize that these are unpotable views exist and you immediately, rather than accepting responsibility with the fact they've gone on challenge for the last, you know, 10 years or so in this country, your immediate thing is to kind of take them outta the public sphere so no one can see them. But that doesn't actually challenge that. What does that do about the fact we've allowed these views to, to emerge, you know, on university campuses. I've seen that the same in America around identity politics. The people of Gaza presented as a kind of universal victim that everyone should agree with. And the Jews, literally the Jews presented as the epitome of white privilege and therefore the enemy. So you are, instead of the usual antisemitism, the historically we knew of the Jews running banking and running society, you've got this notion of them being the white privileged oppressors. And so I, I think that that requires a cultural intervention and some bravery and challenge and more laws will make it worse for everyone to express even those challenges.

Vance Crowe [00:07:19] Yeah. And the laws that you've ta talked about in that are in the UK are way different than the us Like when I hear other people, it wasn't actually until I heard you describing it that I was like, oh man, is it really that, like are there really that many laws prohibiting what people can say in the uk?

Claire Fox [00:07:38] Yeah, I mean I think that that what we've seen is a gradual buildup of public order offenses and speech offenses that one of the points that I was making, which the police are prepared to interpret one minute. So for example, if you put something on social media challenging the transgender ideology, if you call somebody who is a transgender woman, if you even is in a situation where the transgender woman might be being con going to court as a potential rapist and then found guilty 'cause it's a man who is a transgender woman. And then you have to say she, and if you say he, which obviously as a rapist, let me tell you, he that can get the police knocking on your door saying that you have caused an offense or, you know, that's, that's, and there's lots of examples of the police being very trigger happy on that particular issue. We've also had a situation where the, that buffer zones around NHS and health facilities, which is all about anti-abortionists, standing outside praying, and now the law has changed. So anyone who is standing outside within a hundred meters or so of the, of the hospitals or the health facilities can now be arrested for a breach of. And so you've got these ludicrous situations where undoubtedly some people are doing this to prove the point about the law can be standing silently praying and the police will arrest them if they're standing in designated buffer zone.

Claire Fox [00:09:18] Now, I mean, just let me be clear on this one. I, I got involved in this in the Lords 'cause I really opposed this law. I am completely pro-choice, pro-abortion is not quite the way, but you know, that's my side. But I was shocked at how easily the, as it were my side of the island were prepared to compromise on the right to protest or free association because people were standing outside abortion clinics praying and, and, and, and basically it might be on savory. I don't think it's tactic that they deployed to which effect, that's not the point. I don't, nobody was even trying to argue by the way that there was any attempt at stopping women accessing the medical facilities, which they should be entitled to do. It's certainly not very nice if you are going in for a termination, you are kind of met with a bunch of people you know, who think that you are murdering your child or what have you. But they are on the other hand, entitled to that opinion. I don't think the law should be involved in that. So we have had instances, high profile instances, which I was referring to people being arrested for silently praying. I mean, you can't make it up. Then you go out on Saturday as was last week when there was a huge demonstration in sports of free Palestine demonstration, which people were entitled to go on that demonstration. But on the co in the course of that demonstration, people were climbing up scaffolding outside government buildings. They were defacing public property there with people shouting for jihad, shouting slogans that were undoubtedly verging on incitement at the very least.

Claire Fox [00:10:56] But even if you're talking about the actions and the police were just standing by doing nothing, right? So it was the inconsistency in the double standards of the police laws who seem to be very reluctant to intervene in terms of that demonstration, even when the law was obviously being breached. Whereas they're more than happy to interfere in the speech rights of people using some pretty dodgy laws where at least it's inter, you know, where speech laws are always difficult to interpret. And we've had situations recently of people being arrested because they've shouted some pretty ugly things at football matches as a lot of football sporters will do, but I don't think they should be arrested for that, right? These are speech free speech and free speech has to be where you defend hateful speech, ugly speech speech you completely profoundly disagree with. But that's more and more not the case in the UK

Vance Crowe [00:11:54] Who is putting forward these laws and saying like, Hey, this is the way we're gonna protect our people and this is what we need. Is there somebody demanding it for themselves? How does all this get driven?

Claire Fox [00:12:05] I think that what is maybe your a shock to your, to your viewers and listeners is, is that there is a conservative government in this country, IEA right-leaning government. And I can assure you they are not freedom lovers. I mean, you know, they've abandoned free and I think what has happened is the law is used as a substitute for moral leadership for having arguments. You know, if you don't like something, the instinct is to ban it. And I think that that's a, we've got ourselves into this terrible situation now. It's likely that the labor party, the labor opposition, we'll get elected at the next election next year. And they've got even less familiarity with the concept of free speech and freedom. And I'm on the left. But you know, you, you know, people might be shocked by the laws, but you'll know that culturally it's the same in the US in as much as cancel culture, running rampant, you know, people being losing their jobs, their reputations and being absolutely vilified for their views. If they breach certain, you know, write on opinions, you are in trouble. And so even though you might have formally law, you don't have these anti-free speech laws in the us I think that we can safely say that the climate is still such that people are anxious about what they say in public.

Claire Fox [00:13:39] And you can't say that culture exists in the US as much as it does in the uk. I mean, arguably it's even worse in some instances. And I, I think that there's in therefore it's a problem which western countries have got, which is, is that they've abandoned the core principles of free speech as the bedrock of a democratic society.

Vance Crowe [00:14:03] I think a lot of people when they look at stuff like this, they say, yeah, the this, the pendulum always swings one way and it swings back. Just wait a little while. Are you of the opinion that this will just swing back?

Claire Fox [00:14:14] No, the very opposite actually, because we have socialized the generation of young people into believing that words are dangerous, that their safety psychologically safe, that they feel safe, that they feel comfortable, that they're not discombobulated as it were. That has become routine. Now that is what young people think. Now I'm not trying to launch generational war because actually it's our responsibility for having socialized them that way. But these young people are no longer just, this is spilled way beyond university campuses, right? This is, this is mainstream. And so you'll find that those people are not having a major influence on major corporates, who by the way we've seen in the US more than anyone, right, are prepared to do anything almost to keep their young millennial or their young staff happy. You know? So they are prepared to sacrifice some of their own longstanding members of staff because there's a com complaints from new members of staff who, who will say, for example, somebody's transphobic or somebody has, somebody will be accused of racism, not because they've said anything, which in any shape or form we would've traditionally seen as racist. But because they don't go along with the, the orthodoxies, the critical race theory, for example, about white supremacy and so on, people who've criticized Black Lives matters or routinely or were around the time in the couple of years following the, the George Floyd killing were routinely described as racist if they didn't go along with a particular version of anti-racism as epitomized by Black Lives Matters.

Claire Fox [00:16:07] You have situations where we have compelled speech, people being forced to say that or forced to take the knee or forced to go along with certain like, like using certain gender pronouns and so on and so forth. You know, these things are compelled speech. So I, I think that, you know, for the pendulum to, to swing back, you need to have an argument. And what I found is that many of the most influential people in society in the uk, and I'm afraid I haven't noticed it, much difference in the US who run major institutions or, you know, run major multinationals or are involved in government or in the civil service or what have you. They are not prepared to have these arguments out. They themselves are frightened, they'll be canceled if they're challenging. I mean, cancel culture has made cowards a very many people because, you know, you get called out as a bigot, you know that you are in trouble even if nobody thinks you are a bigot, by the way,

Vance Crowe [00:17:11] Even if everybody thinks that you're totally fine, that whatever you said wasn't that big of a deal, they don't want to get pulled into the vortex of, you know, it's funny, I often think if you were to go back to let's say the mid nineties or even the mid two thousands and you were like, let me explain to you what has happened. It would be so difficult to explain how this came up as to be like trying to explain to somebody, you know, a foreign culture like an Asian, you know, a hundred year history because things happen so fast and people's ways of approaching things seemingly changed almost overnight. When I was in college, the people that taught me about freedom of speech were my college communications professors, the ones that like you would take a media law class and they would show you like, this is just how far you can push this whole thing. And so, I mean, I know a lot of this has gone on on college campuses, but it, it's just astounding to me how quickly it has changed and that people don't have this sacrosanct value of we protect free speech at all costs. Because if we don't, it could be bad for me. Yeah.

Claire Fox [00:18:24] Well I think that's though that one of the things that happened, I mean I remember when I was trying to talk about the threat to free speech on campus, you know, maybe, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago now, I can't remember. And, and I talked to some senior professors in some very good universities here and they said, you, you know, you have to be careful about stirring up the hornet's nest and they'll grow outta it. And so what happened was was that too many people close their eyes to this, weren't prepared to challenge it, it was almost as though you were accused somehow, you know, the way today when you try and raise some of these things, people say, oh, you are just stirring up the culture wars. 'cause they, by, by drawing attention to some of these egregious problems that you are the problem that you know, that you're meant to, we're all meant to kind of like look the other way. And I think that as a consequence of that, these ideas have just been able to percolate for quite a long time, bubbling under the surface with people just assuming that they were quite skin deep, superficial, you know, shallow. But they've actually seeped into all manner of, of society. And I think that in some ways, the people who run our society have become discombobulated because they have lost the habit almost of arguing for the values that we stand on. You know, so, so people don't quite know how to argue for free speech anymore. You know, they, they've kind of forgotten, you know, it's kind of like assumed you can't assume anything.

Claire Fox [00:20:00] Every generation has to fight for freedom and you can't assume that the, you know, the young people are gonna go along with you just because they will, they'll grow out of it and so on. That's not what's happening at all. And as I say, I mean, it's not, I I'm not blaming the young people because very often it's their university professors who've introduced them to these ideas. Yeah. But, but one of the, yeah, sorry, go on.

Vance Crowe [00:20:21] Well, to your point, you have to practice argumentation all the time. And like, I think one of the false things that happens in people's minds, they listen to a lot of podcasts or whatever, you know, YouTube videos and they hear their argument and they think, ah, I agree with that. But then when they go to put it out into the real world and they run into opposition or somebody pushing back on them, they're completely unprepared for, oh, the argument that I thought that they were gonna give me, which I have a good retort to, is different. And so therefore they become frustrated and then all of a sudden it's easier not to have that argument. And since we aren't talking about big things or small things, people don't get the practice of it. Like, it's rare. Some, like, I have a podcast, so I'm talking about ideas all the time, and I find out I get halfway into an idea and you're like, I actually don't know that as well as I thought I did. But if you don't have something like this, maybe the only person you're, you're arguing with is your roommate or your spouse or your whatever, and it's, and you don't really know how to react to pressure. And I think people, once they go through a couple of uncomfortable times now say like, ah, maybe we shouldn't do this at all.

Claire Fox [00:21:30] Yeah. And also the consequences can be quite severe, can't they? I mean, you know, as we've said, I mean, if you, as it were misspeak or you kind of think out loud and maybe say the wrong thing, the consequences can be social, you know, isolation, you know, you can be kicked. I mean, I know that students, I know that they've maybe tried to oppose some of these things got turned on by, by just by activists by the way, not by everyone, not by the majority. And the sort of the, the scenarios set up. Well, you are a bigot, you know, and, and if you don't wanna be a bigot, you have to agree with us. Now, that's not the same, I think as what we've had in the past, which is where you try and convince people. And I know that the last time we spoke, in fact, following that you had Timandra Harkness on your podcast talking about straw manning, you know, I was always encouraged to think of the absolute best arguments that would be used against me. And so straw manning is where you really try and prepare yourself for that. But there aren't debates anymore. I mean, it's very difficult when the, the scenario is that you try and say, well, let's have this discussion out in public. Let's invite an array of different opinions. And the, as you know, common practice these days is say, I won't appear on a panel with soandso, with soandso, with soandso. So actually people are stuck in echo chambers and they're not used to engaging with people who've got different opinions, which makes their arguments weaker.

Claire Fox [00:23:04] But also it means that, you know, all swats of people don't hear the other argument. And by the way, we are all in danger of being an echo chambers because, you know, once that happens and you can't get people to debate with you, then it can be comforting sense of solidarity, of course, if you are with people who agree with you, but it's not healthy in a democratic society. And I think sometimes some of the, as it were, our side, when I say I don't want to make presumptions, I mean our side in terms of my side who were the free speech people who were worried about as some of this, this new ideology, this kind of critical theory ideology destroying the basis on which you can have an argument, you know, it gets caricatured as woke versus anti woke and the anti woke side, which I suppose I'm in, I don't like those words or as bad as anyone else, you know, because the basis go, oh, you are just woke, you are a snowflake. I mean that, I mean, that's as bad as anyone else, right? Or I, you tried to cancel my friends, so I'm now gonna look through your Twitter feed or X feed and find things that you said when you were 15 so that I can cancel you, you know? So by the time you finished, we just end up constantly not engaging with each other's arguments. And you can be ferocious intellectually in that engagement, but actually trying to find ways of never having to encounter that argument by canceling people and destroying their capacity to operate in the public sphere.

Claire Fox [00:24:39] Well,

Vance Crowe [00:24:39] And the public sphere is also losing out on all this. I can remember, so longtime listeners of the podcast probably know that Claire runs the Battle of Ideas, which is this amazing debate program that happens once a year. People come in from all over Europe, the uk and they, and they debate on hot topics. And so anyone you go to, it could be on you. You're like, I can't believe they're even putting this down in writing that they're gonna talk about this, let alone then actually getting together in a room. And this was years ago that I went for the first time, and I, I, I was shocked then. I can't even imagine it now, but I remember sitting in an auditorium, it was close to the end of the whole weekend, and it was a bunch of college professors talking about fascism. And no one would even put together an argument of, like a definition of what is fascism. And the crowd started, like, booing might be a bit extreme, but they definitely let the, the, the panelists know like, Hey, we are here for you to say something of substance. But most places that never happens, right? Like in corporate America, the whole goal is to speak words and say as little as possible so that that way there's nothing to, there's no surface, no attack edge for you, but the public loses out on that. I'd never even thought that you couldn't define fascism or that that was even controversial. So if you

Claire Fox [00:26:01] Don't have that professors, they were professors in fascism, this was their, we didn't just ask a bunch of like, professors in physics to define fascism. These are people who were like world renowned experts. But, but anyway, timing wise, this is being filmed and recorded as I'm about to have the battle of ideas, first of all, but you'll hear it afterwards. But, but do look out for the phones, and I've got my brochure here so my colleagues can see that I'm doing due diligence and telling you all about it, but is this weekend and we have a hundred panel debates, 400 speakers, and, you know, three and a half thousand attendees, and the public is part of that. So the point that you've made is we might have a panel of three or four people giving their view, but the public half of the time is the audience. So it is like a, a a series of public conversations. And at any given time, you've got 10, 12 sessions at once. You choose what you go to, and they can be on everything from, you know, artificial intelligence and the threats and opportunities it raises to what's happening in Israel, of course, to what does diversity really mean? And everything in between the state of the economy and so on and so forth. The reason why we do this is to try and recreate the public square as it was ever envisaged to be. But who's, what's shocking is that we need to do it. I mean, this is what the public square was, you know, in any sort of political sense that you would go and discuss and debate these things.

Claire Fox [00:27:32] But guess what, we found that more progressive voices who say, yes, I'd really like to speak, and then they agree, and then the next minute they say, actually, I've decided I can't because my colleagues have said that it would be wrong to be seen to be endorsing the Battle of Ideas Festival. In other words, there is a pressure not to do this now, I mean, luckily there's enough people who do do it, you know, we've got 400 speakers and like, let me tell you, they don't all agree. But when you get into a situation where people who've got, for example, are very enthusiastic about net zero and environmentalism, and want to come and debate with people who are not so enthusiastic about environmentalist environmentalism as the only way to understand how we should organize society, at the very least, that's interesting, right? And if you are confident in your views, we have people who agree to do that, and then they start getting got at by other environmentalists, say, you shouldn't engage in that. And I think it's an anti-democratic tendency, which is to say that people do not believe that you can persuade our fellow members of the public of a view. So it's almost like, you know, don't, don't, lets have the argument out. Now, I I I think myself, democracy requires the belief that we can all change our mind. And you hear and you change your mind. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:29:01] I was at a, I went to a satellite Battle of ideas event in Germany, and it just so happened it was the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses on the wall. And like that was, I, I will remember that as a pivotal life moment because up until that point, I had literally never heard anyone didn't like Martin Luther or thought that he, you know, had all these bad things that he had done. It had, I had literally never heard it. And so you think about the value of getting people together, I didn't have a horse in the race, bad guy, good guy. He was hundreds of years ago, you know, that's fine. But the fact that people felt really strongly about it had really interesting and engaging arguments has changed my perspective on history and the future. But if you don't have those arguments, then everybody in the audience doesn't even have a chance to know, like, oh, there's something controversial here. There's something more to learn. I, it's what the answer that I have in my head is not obviously true.

Claire Fox [00:30:01] Use a really interesting example because one of the keynote debates that we've got this year at the Battle of Ideas is the war on the past and this kind of attempt at, at, at destroying real history and replacing it with a kind of version of today imposed on history. So, you know, this is partly the decolonization issue. And you know, everything is now seen through the prism of slavery, decolonization, you can't have a conversation. Everybody is seen through the moral standards of today or the political standards of today. And as a consequence, great philosophers are being canceled. So, you know, Edinburgh University who, who had a building called, you know, the Hume building after the great Scottish Enlightenment thinker, Hume changed the name after, you know, 20 students went and handed a petition in and said he was a white supremacist. You know what it's like, I mean, you, every philosopher and obviously people lived in periods where, for example, slavery existed at the same time as them or what have you, right? I mean, we know all this, but the reason I'm saying that is not, not that's fine for you to say, I want us to reassess or reappraise history. I'm not talking about a history that, that I'm not talking about as now being uncritical of historical figures. But you have to bring with it some intelligence, some information, some historical fact. And what's happening is, is that people are behaving as though everything's a meme.

Claire Fox [00:31:32] You know what I mean? So people will just say, oh, Winston Churchill racist, do you know? It's like, oh, and if you say what they'll say, oh, so you support him then. So you are a white supremacist who supports him. You know what I mean? You can't get anywhere that way. And most of the people who are saying this, if you then, and this is happening with the Middle East, you know, people will say 75 years of occupation of Gaza. It's like, I don't know what you are talking about, right? But that's a meme you've read because Gaza has not been occupied by seven, five years. You know, you don't know what you're sort, do you understand anything about Middle East in history? And I, I'm somebody who has supported Palestinian self-determination for years, but I also understand that the Palestinian self, you know, people who want Palestinian rights to state solution, this is a part of the world that's become completely taken over by radical Islamist thinking, right? Which is completely different to those national liberation struggles of the past. And at the very least, we can now have a route if we all understand something about that, right? But no, that's not what you are doing. People are gonna say, if you don't attack Israel for what's happening in Gaza, now you are pro genocide and you want all Palestinians to be murdered. And you think that Gaza, the, the children of Gaza don't count. No, I'm not saying that right. I mean, it's unbelievable. So, you know, the, the problem we've got is that you need to be able to, I mean, we need to be able to talk about today, but we also need to be able to have nuanced, intelligent, contentious discussions about historical periods that might well inform the way we view today.

Claire Fox [00:33:19] It might well be that you understand something about Martin Luther differently and, and the emergence of conscience and the importance of what Martin Luther did, or the negatives around his assumption that, you know, we almost had no choice. You know, the, the removal of, of, of, of subjectivity, all of these things, or Martin Luther King, you might have opinions, you might say, he wasn't the hero that we thought he was. Or you might say no, he was the most important thinker in terms of civil rights. Let's have that argument. I don't mind. But what is happening now is, is that if you say, I agree with Martin Luther King, that we should judge people on their character, not their skin color. You are accused of effectively endorsing racism because as you know, we now have to judge people on their skin color. That's the new orthodoxy. So that's not an intelligent conversation, that is a, an attack based on ignorance, not history. So

Vance Crowe [00:34:21] If you think about a non, like a, a, a non-discussion, right? Where things are just put forward, one of the biggest things that people rally around flags, right? A flag is a symbol and it's really sticky and stretchy. So you can get a lot of people underneath a flag, and whoever controls the narrative about that flag gets to say, what does this represent? But somebody might come to underneath a flag for one reason, another person, I think about your views on free speech. But then I think about, okay, let's say you have pro-Palestinian protestors, and within that you start seeing people flying Hamas flags or you know, some other terrorist organization that, that that is, you know, universally understood the, the Taliban, for example. How does a, a society deal with people within a protest movement under the flag of we are trying to protect people, or we are trying to support these people that you have other people that come in and either raise their own flags, something like, you know, we support this form of terrorism or this ideology without society breaking down, but also without allowing that to foment revolution in your country.

Claire Fox [00:35:36] I think that in some ways, society is breaking down and flags in this country have, have vary in the news. So let me tell you the story. So first of all, Hamas is a prescribed organization. So it is illegal Hamas in, in the uk it's prescribed as a terrorist organization. And we have,

Vance Crowe [00:35:56] So that would mean that membership is, is illegal. Like you're not allowed to be a member. Yeah.

Claire Fox [00:36:00] So then, so then, so then you have this, what does it mean if you support an illegal organization like Hamas? And the, the law is not quite sure, but this is what happened last weekend. Lots of people were waving I Hamas or even similar flags to isis, right? Like Isis, Islamic Stater, and the police, the metropolitan police were putting out on social media messages saying it would be wrong to see this flag as pro Islamic state because there's a slight variation. And we've, as we've, we've we've, we've gone to some scholars of flags and they've told us that this isn't quite the Islamic state flag. I mean, I can assure you the kids waving it thought was Islamic. Like, like, right? Anyway, and so it was the police, you were explaining all this, I mean, on social media, it became this great thing, you know, people were shouting pro jihadi slogans, right? And calling for jihad, right? So, you know, at least there's a, at least there's a sense in which I as a free speech to understand that inciting people to, you know, jihad is something that we should, you know, at least kind of pause. The police are putting out these statements saying Jihad is one meaning is that the other? Meaning is an internal religious struggle. This was the London Metropolitan police, right?

Claire Fox [00:37:33] In the meantime, in the meantime, a couple of guys who I I I have no doubt were being provocative, got out union jack flags. They were arrested. What? Because they were seen to be being provocative. Then in another instance, a a a young man brought an Israeli flag to the demonstration, the Pro Palestine demonstration. Undoubtedly, that was provocative by the way. I mean, you know, I know it was provocative. He got chased down. And I'm not kidding you, I really thought, my God, they're gonna lynch him, right? He that got, they got, he was protected, but the people who chased him down because he had the wrong flag, right? They, I think one person was arrested even though there was a mob. So what I'm trying to say to you is it's never easy, but there's something gone terribly wrong when the police almost refuse to police demonstrations in what would be normally common sense ways to ensure that you have maximized freedom, but you will deal with things which are obviously problematic. And as a consequence of the public being so infuriated by watching this, they call for more laws. And then opportunistic politicians say, oh, the problem is the police haven't got the laws.

Claire Fox [00:39:07] And it's like, yes, they have got the laws, they're not using the laws that they've got, but, but you are right to ask me the question because it is difficult and uncomfortable, right? I, I, you know, and I see these young people pulling down, you know, pulling down the posters of the children who are kidnapped, you know, tearing them down. I dunno if you've seen these videos that are doing around, this is happening in the uk it's happening all over America as well. People are putting up pictures of the kidnapped children, and then people are coming along and tearing them down angrily and saying, I mean, it's like horrible. Why would you? And you, your instinct is, why aren't we arrest the people who are tearing the posters down? But actually, I have to be true to my beliefs and say that you are entitled to put the poses up. You're really entitled to pull them down. But actually, don't we need to see this? Because one of the things that we now can see is that we've got a real problem in the United Kingdom. We've got a real problem of identity politics, where a wide range of people, either who are young Muslims, often with families who've lived over years, it's not about immigration in a straightforward way, are supporters of radical Islam, or they're prepared to look the other way if they're marching next to supporters of radical Islam, as is the, the British left, which remember I'm part of marching alongside. And when they hear jihadi slogans or antisemitic slogans just can't hear them.

Claire Fox [00:40:42] At the very same time, this is the same people who are so hypersensitive on racism that if you say something like blacklisting, they'll try and get you canceled. 'cause blacklisting, apparently, I mean, you know, I, it's a stupid example except that somebody nearly got canceled for saying that phrase. So they're usually hypersensitive, they'll say that Shakespeare play is racist, you know, I need trigger warnings on everything I read because of racism. And yet they can be marching alongside people shouting antisemitic slogans. And they go, well, it's understandable. You've got to understand because of Israel's oppression of Palestine, right? So I think the we need to maximize speech in order even that we identified the problematic ideas in society and don't drive them underground.

Vance Crowe [00:41:37] Yeah. The most dangerous people in all of this are the, well, there's probably two, you know, there's the mobs that are allowed to gather around this idea of, you know, what, what you can and can't say. But it also is who is the person that decides what you can and can't say? Because ultimately that person is deciding what you can and can't think what you can and can't rally around. And so the, as soon as you start putting in, you can have these flags or you can do these things and you start creating a distinction along political lines, like the, the example, the obvious one you learn in your first year of college or whatever, when they're like, well, you can't yell fire in a crowded, you know, theater. Well, okay, but that's not a political statement. You're not, you're not presupposing where this goes. And so you're saying you can't, you're not allowed to say that. But the, the idea of giving power over to a politician is, is just that it is taking power away from individuals and it is giving them it to the, to the mob and to the powerful. And it's, I, it's so hard for me to understand why someone would want to do that, because I think it's such a part of my value system, and it's hard for me to imagine that my own countrymen don't feel that same way. But they don't.

Claire Fox [00:42:53] No, they don't. I think, I think it is very difficult, but as I say, I think that we have to acknowledge that freedom is no longer, you know, you can no longer say to someone that's an assault on free speech and they become defensive. I mean, they say, yeah, well, it's hate speech, so I don't care. I mean, if you accuse someone of censorship, they'll say, yes, well, we need to censor those views because they're offensive or because they psychologically damage people. The J.S. Mill notion of, of, of, of safety has now become of harm. Rather, the harm principle, which is unless it harms people, has now been expanded to mean psychological harm. Which obviously means that you can say, I had, you know, I've had, I've been canceled by universities and they said that that students would feel unsafe if I was on campus. They don't mean that they thought it was gonna go round with a machete. You know, they, they, what they thought was, they, what they said was that my views, even though they didn't know what my views were going to be, would make people feel unsafe. And they, they knew that, 'cause they'd seen some things they'd tweeted or what have you, you know, this is, this is routine now. So it's a very, we're in a very precarious situation. And I, and I, and I think that what one of the things that I learned was after what we call seven seven in the uk, which was when the, the tube bombings happened, which was kind of, you know, when I say oh nine 11, you know what I mean? Like nine 11 happened and then we had the seven seven, I can't even remember, but obviously there's been a huge range of, of Isis atrocities in, in, in Europe, you know, for some years the seven seven was terrible, the biggest, as it were, terrorist attacked by ISIS in the uk.

Claire Fox [00:44:42] So after seven seven, the, the u universities in the UK decided to ban an organization called Hizb ut-Tahrir. Hizb ut-Tahrir are Islamicists, you know, they're, they're Islamicists, right? And they radical Islam supporters and they banned Hizb ut-Tahrir on campus. And I actually argued in defense of Hizb ut-Tahrir, not because I thought that Hizb ut-Tahrir were anything other than they were, but I thought that banning them turned them into free speech heroes. It gave them a certain amount of credibility. And I, not all universities, some universities did it, then the National Union students did it. So Hizb ut-Tahrir apparently don't exist, right? That's not what happened. They just kind of renamed themselves, right? And for a start off. And so everybody thinks, oh great, you haven't seen Hizb ut-Tahrir for a while 'cause they're not here. Which completely missed the point. But anyway, we should be having the arguments at. And they learn, Hizb ut-Tahrir realized that, you know, that there were certain things that they couldn't organize around openly because they might then get kicked outta college. So it all goes on. In other words, it goes underground. Right Now we've got these demonstrations in London, and guess what, Hizb ut-Tahrir all over the bloody place right now. I, in, in my attitude was to go to Hizb ut-Tahrir meetings at the time to speak on panels with, with other people who, like myself, were free speeches and argue with the young Asian kids who were coming to the meeting and argue in defense of enlightenment values and to argue for the rule of law in reference to Sharia law.

Claire Fox [00:46:23] And when they were saying to me, well, you should defend our right to free speech. I say, well, you know, that came from, you know, freedom of conscience. I said, that came from Locke, right? Do you know who Locke is? Right? Sharia law won't give you that. You want me to deploy the Phil philosophical arguments that came from the enlightenment to defend your right, to organize, and you won't have anything to do with those others. You are not even familiar with them. So let me familiarize you anyway, you know, you can imagine a bit of a tussle. Anyway, that's what I believe is our responsibility. That you argue that you, and I hope, by the way, I hope that I won some hearts and minds, but, but one of the things that happens is, is that people are frightened to do it. And one in this country is slightly different in America, I think because there's many, many, many Muslims in the uk. I mean, I don't mean that I, I, you know, stupid thing to say, but that's not a problem. No, there's lots, it's a, it's a multifaith country and all party, but what you can't do is you can't constantly be told that. For example, if you criticize Islam or you make a, you know, you say that there's radical Islam, that you are going to be accused of Islamophobia. And what happens is people are frightened. So we are in a situation whereby in France, a teacher only three years ago was beheaded, beheaded for showing a picture of Allah in a religious education lesson.

Claire Fox [00:47:56] And then in this country, a teacher also was showing a picture of it was the cartoons, you know, from Charlie Hebdo. It wasn't showing them and laughing. But anyway, it doesn't matter. It was part of a lesson plan. There was a mob turned up at the school that teacher ended up in hiding the school suspended. The teacher politicians to this day have never defended that teacher on any political side. He's still in hiding right now. That's because people won't intervene because they're frightened that somebody will think that they're being racist and Islamophobic. But I think it's absolutely patronizing and racist that if you want to identify one, that behavior that you are, assume that you are attacking all Muslims. I'm not, I'm attacking that. I'm that behavior. I don't think all Muslims think the same. 'cause I don't believe in identity politics. I don't think all Christians think the same. I don't think all white people think the same. I don't think all Afro-Caribbean people think the same, or African Americans think the same. No, that's, it's not me that's doing that. It's other people doing it. So in other words, you can't hold people to account for their views or, or their actions if when you try to, you are accused of being prejudiced and bigoted. If, for example, you are a white person and, and you criticize somebody who's from a different ethnicity, why do you assume that that's because of their skin color? It's because actually you're criticizing what they're saying or what they're doing.

Claire Fox [00:49:29] And we all know that there's genuine, real racist and backward attitudes in every society, and they should be challenged and taken up when you hear them.

Vance Crowe [00:49:39] I'm in such an, I'm in an unusual position here in the US in that I live in the center of the country. I'm in St. Louis, and I spend a lot of time in rural America and with people that are in rural America. And I have deep conversations with people. I'm recording their life stories. So these people are trusting me enough to tell me about their lives. And there's this sense that there is like this deep brooding racism among people living in the middle or rural people or people that are uneducated and that is just as big of a caricature as the racist ideals that people think that they, that they hold. But once it becomes endemic, once a culture believes like, oh, those people are bigoted and they're dumb and we need to protect ourselves from them. Like it's, it is so crazy to me. I certainly, racism must exist. But to hear the president of the United States stand up and be like, white supremacy is the number one thing that we have to root out in all of America. This is our biggest problem. This is like you are throwing gasoline on, on, on something here, and I don't, and then you couple it with, well, there are extreme groups and there are people that are, that are putting ideas out there that are crazy that only way through this is an open dialogue of ideas. And so let, let me transition.

Vance Crowe [00:51:10] You've been in the House of Lords now for two years.

Claire Fox [00:51:14] Yeah, I just took, yeah, two and a half I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:51:17] So you spend a lot of your time putting arguments out. I see your videos all the time. Are you making a difference in, by putting your ideas out there?

Claire Fox [00:51:27] No, probably not. But I suppose what I try and do, and this is where you hope, like you will with your podcast, where you hope you make a difference. I have a platform in the House of Lords, which is an unelected second chamber for people who don't know, and it therefore is, is is anti-democratic, and I disapprove of it, but it's nonetheless, it's the legislators. You know, I I I help make the laws. I'm very, I'm a non-affiliated member of the House of Lords. And of course, you know, I'm sure that I'm slightly endorsed by my colleagues there who look, gonna look and think, oh, she's off. But what I hope that I am able to do is to represent views that would not otherwise be heard in the seat of power. The point that you were just making then, and I I I, your assessment by the way, is exactly what's happening in the uk, which is they are throwing gasoline on this, right? In relation to race. Because white working class people who are not endemically racist, who are struggling to make a living, good, honest people are being vilified, that because of their skin color, maybe because they're a bit worried about immigration or because they voted to leave the European Union in Brexit are racist, scum, neanderthal back with people. Once you do that and you turn people against each other in that way, in the way you described, and you have ethnicity and race, so on, this is dangerous. So lots of people feel voiceless in that situation.

Claire Fox [00:52:59] They feel that they can't speak, right? They've gotten, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:53:02] And the only people they can speak to are the people that are like them, that already are being persecuted as well. Democracy,

Claire Fox [00:53:08] Isn't it? Because if you feel unrepresented that there's no one to vote for, that nobody is listening to you, we know where that can go, as it were. And there are maligned bad faith actors who exploit those things on, on, on, on the, you know, what's the far right or the far left, whichever way you, you know, there are people who exploit that. So what at least I can try and do is to say things that other people won't say, you know, I, and to represent some views that people in power sometimes kind of go good. I what I, I I at least I've been given the freedom and the privilege really, that I'm not beholden to a political party. I, I mean a great, I I, you know, I I put out my speeches on social media all the time that I do in the House of Lords. I don't, you know, so you, I you can all, you know, sign up for my free substack where I put them out and I do a, I do, you know, I kind of do once a month or once a week or whatever, I kind of report on what's happening in the house of laws, what's happening in the heart of, of power. Because I, I genuinely feel as though that if, if, if we're talking about, you know, echo chambers, I mean the Westminster Elite, you know, it is a bubble. The people who run UK society are in a bubble. They talk to each other and they don't talk to anyone else, and they don't often represent ordinary people. So I try and cut through that. Now, I'm not, I I'm not trying to present myself as some sort of like hero of the masses.

Claire Fox [00:54:42] And there are other people of course who, who do that. And I, and it would be, it's just kind of, I don't want to be over overdo it here, but that's where I think I can make a difference. I can also say to the people in power, you don't seem to understand what's going on out there. You know, you don't know how people feel. I can also say to them, you are misra, you know, we had a big a row about what, what law to bring in about protecting academic freedom. And the government we're surrounded by these people who are lobbying them. Say, oh, there isn't a problem of cancel culture on campus. Right? But the people who are saying that are in the House of Lords, or who, or, or what have you, that's because they run colleges, right? They're the vice chancellors though. I mean, they weren't being canceled because they were the people who were turning a blind eye when other people were being canceled. So I was able, along with Lizabeth to say, look, I'm telling you what ordinary students go through, right? Look, they're the, they, they're never gonna be canceled. 'cause they've got conventional views that's never upset anyone and they're in power. We're only talking about ordinary 19-year-old kids trying to raise issues and being driven outta campus or external speakers, et cetera. So I suppose I can just do that. So it's chipping away and my, and my view is that we all have to do that. That everybody has to do that. And if we all chip away, that's something. And what we at least try and do with the battle of ideas, first of all, the things that we do as the Academy of Ideas is also create a sense of, not a safe space, but a sense of solidarity.

Claire Fox [00:56:20] So you just don't feel like you are going mad. You know, like, 'cause sometimes people are sitting at home saying, I'm going mad, I can't believe it. At least you sort of say, there's more people we think like that than you realize.

Vance Crowe [00:56:33] Well, there's definitely a comradery at the battle of ideas that happens because you're kind of like, Hey, we're, we're sitting in here listening to these ideas that are, you know, full of electricity. So I know that the battle will have already taken place by the time we publish this, but what are you excited about this year? What are the topics that you're like, all right, we're pushing the envelope with this one.

Claire Fox [00:56:56] Goodness me, there's so much. I, I do think that the, the discussions around who runs society, how it's run, why there's a crisis of leadership, I think it's called, you know, you know, who's in power, the new elites looking, you know, at some of these points that, that we were making about how come multinational organizations have all gone, woke, right? Or out there, why are all these people under pressure? I think those things are very important to kind of really pull that apart. We are also doing quite a lot of discussion on the family, whether the family's in jeopardy, family values, and that might sound very conservative for me, the big lefty. But we're in a situation now where there's an actual argument going on about whether teachers should tell parents what their kids are being taught in schools when it comes to sex and relationship education. And if a child of even, you know, 12 or 13 says, I, I, I feel like a boy and they're a girl, that the teacher doesn't tell the parent. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:07] Oh, I mean, and I, one of the big subjects that's happened here is that there's now a movement against homeschooling your kids. And so you have all these Harvard, you know, professors that teach teachers and they're saying, we just can't let these parents, you know, indoctrinate all their kids with these racist ideas by being homeschooled. Yeah.

Claire Fox [00:58:27] And that's exactly what they're saying. Exactly the same. It is race in America. It's a bit race here, but it's all sort of things. So that's very important. I think that we're also going to, I think we're going to have some very important discussions as well, trying to come to terms as it were, almost like the aftermath, I think you could say aftermath of, of lockdown, you know, because there's lots of kids not going to school now. And it's not just because their parents are homeschooling them, by the way, which is a pH new phenomenon in the uk, which is that people do not trusting schools, but also a lot of kids just disappeared. Now, you know, it is not surprising because we've closed the schools down here and there's a, there's a sort of sense in which the social fabric of society kind of slightly falling apart, right? And so we need to kind of examine that where, and you know, the post lockdown period, misinformation, disinformation, who decides, right? Who decides what is misinformation? Who decides what's truth? You know, can you trust science when it's described as the science and presented to you as dogma? And if you disagree, you are told that you are part of the misinformation world. What we think about online censorship everywhere is having this debate now about whether there should be new laws. I mean, we just brought in this online safety bill in the uk, which is gonna have a terrible impact on people's freedom to express themselves online. And I mean, I won't go into, I mean, that's a whole different story, but it's happening everywhere.

Claire Fox [00:59:59] The European Union are also brought in really draconian interventions on this school. And I think I already mentioned, you know, artificial intelligence. Is it scary? Is it a dystopian, is it an opportunity? What do we think? We've got a whole strand of debates about the, you know, can artificial intelligence really replace art? I mean, can you get them to write the novel and we'll never notice if there's a novelist again, all of these important things, and I suppose underneath it all, and in loads of stuff on the genders and race issues, because they are big issues. But also the economy we shouldn't forget is falling apart. The economy is falling apart. How the UK economy inflation running wild. Yeah. We've got a session on Trumpism, how do we explain it? And this is kind of like anthropology for people in the uk. It's like, it's one thing saying that you understand why people might not be satisfied with Joe Biden's administration, but Trump really type of thing, right? And, you know, I think there's an argument to be had there, and we'll have people arguing, some people who are more sympathetic to why, not even sympathetic to Trump, but sympathetic to why Trump would be popular and other people who were appalled by the, you know, the fact that no matter what you do to Trump, he still seems to survive, you know, put him in prison, he is gonna get more votes. You know, that kind of thing. So all of these things, anyway, you get the gist. In other words, everything and anything.

Claire Fox [01:01:31] And I, you know, when you say what the hot topic and, and, and obviously we'll be discussing Israel and antisemitism and what does hate crime mean and what does all of these things, I honestly learn as much from this as anyone. I mean, I'm organizing it, but I'm also a punter and I listen to sessions that I don't know something about. And I think, wow, you know, I I, I also love the fact that we have so many young people and old people IE intergenerational without trying to tick boxes. It's a very diverse audience of people from a whole range of social and ethnic backgrounds. And I only say that because people might think, oh, well, you know, no, everyone can come. And of course, what's fantastic then is remember what you were saying, you know, I I, I love it when young people come up at the end and say, I disagreed with so much, but at least I heard some of their arguments. And that will really make me think again, that's what we're trying to do. That's what everyone should be trying to do. And we owe it to young people to present them with a more complicated view of the world than that which they're gonna find on social media.

Vance Crowe [01:02:47] Well, I love it and I am so glad that you're doing it, and it inspires me, like to try and do something else, whether it's more with the podcast or to try and arrange something. So good luck with the battle of ideas and

Claire Fox [01:03:00] Right, so let's say in the future we are gonna collaborate on something and not just have it as that we do a podcast or let's try and do something together.

Vance Crowe [01:03:09] I would do that in the blink of an eye if we can, if we can make that work, that'd be great. Well, Claire, if people wanted to find out more, I know it'll be after the fact about the Battle of Ideas. Where should they go?

Claire Fox [01:03:20] Well, I, I really do think that Substack works in this sense because it just means that, you know, twice a week you can find out what we're up to. And you don't have to open it as a newsletter if you don't want to. Well, you kind of, if it looks appealing, and all our work now goes into that. So it, it's Claire Fox and the Academy of Ideas, Substack, you know, kind of Google and you'll find us, and you know, we have got websites, but they'll be there and there will, in that subset, we'll be putting out films, filmed debates that have happened at the Battle of Ideas. So you can catch up and one thing, you'll, you'll, you'll like this fans, I don't if the person is listening or not I, or anything, I got stopped in the street during the year, during this year, somebody who took a selfie with me and they first came across me on your podcast. They were, they were over as a tourist looking at, you know, the houses parliament. They literally stopped me and said, your Claf, it was very funny. And I did mean to email you and tell you because I couldn't believe it, but it's always worth talking to each other because it means that we start to have solidarity even with people we don't know. And, and that person was following and had signed up to our substack. That was the point. So that's my advert.

Vance Crowe [01:04:50] Well that's wonderful. And nothing makes me happier than to hear that the podcast lends itself to people getting connected. 'cause that's what the world is all about. It's not just the ideas you hear, it's like, Hey, that person had an idea and I'm gonna contact them and I'm gonna fi like, I'm gonna try and share ideas. I'm gonna try and do something that, that's why I do it. So this is great to hear. Well, good luck with the battle of ideas. I'll be watching on social media and thank you so much for coming on.