THANK you to A R Devine for alerting us to this ‘excellent and sometimes hilarious conversation’ between the irrepressible Mark Steyn and Douglas Murray on the topic of Murray’s latest tome, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity.
Amidst the joking about – the mind-boggling irrationality of identity politics and politicians’ enthusiasm for the idea – come the very serious points, namely how young people have been misled into believing that the world operates in the ‘inter-sectionalist manner’. In this fanciful world everything interlocks Murray explains and dealing with one ‘oppression’ means you have got to deal with them all; that unlocking one means unlocking the rest. Though this is just not true since race, feminist and trans issues all run against each other, ‘to lead a good life’ – to be virtuous – has come to mean waging war across the social media, ‘defriending’ and shaming people who are not equally woke or equally vigilant.
Yet, behind these misguided souls he goes on there are the people for whom this is just brute politics who are patently insincere.
Their discussion moves to the ethics of ‘hanging on to truth’ versus playing the new inter-sectional warriors at their own game, to the strangeness (and sadness) of identity rationales and more. It’s a great listen.
