I'm getting to be quite impressed with the Babylon Bee.
Today on The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan talk to James Lindsay about the cult of wokeness, its ideology and its tactics, and also about how the landscape of Christianity is kind of like Narnia to an atheist.
Auto-transcript, not good, but at least you can get the gist of it:
Hi everybody welcome to the Babylon Bee interview show today we're talking to a returning guest James Lindsay that's Kyle man and I'm Ethan Nicole hi James Lindsay is you guys saw him if whoever actually didn't see him is back when her to interior audio podcasts we had him and his associate Peter Boghossian they're well known for the grievance studies papers where they punked the academic I always have a tough time using all the words involved in this because I didn't go to college they punked all the academics with these papers that oh yeah she's trying to show how bogus at all was Punk'd is the academic word for what happened yeah for sure I mean it could be sorry James welcome back to the Babylon Beet podcast which is now in video so we can see you sure yeah thanks for having me yeah we hope you're not disappointing anyone with how you look like they had this disappoint people with how I look constantly right there I never meet your heroes folks never meet your heroes are you man spreading right now yes under the we can't see it busy down there we go okay this is super lame but the only room in my house that has good lighting is a spare bedroom so this is actually all set up on a bed not a desk so I have to man spread when I do my podcasts because stick it around let is in post or something to get it sits on the side of the bed right up against the managers such male fragility this is what happens when you're like real and don't have a studio like you guys do yeah I am man spreading but that's this guy you guys I'm like I mean it happens well you were just expressing before we came on a couple things one that you're exhausted right now you're you're getting pounded by just Twitter life well know Twitter is hard but but I've stopped mostly paying attention to my notifications which is a life-changing thing it's so much better yeah I get a lot of direct messages like an insane amount sorry is open or is it pure yes okay yes but that's only a fraction of the problem and I don't want to like you know a lot of people talk regularly on there but it's people I've already let in so even if they were open they're still in okay so I literally am getting probably close to a thousand direct messages a day right now Terry email is worse my email is people send me paragraphs they're attachments it's like somebody sent me this thing earlier and I really wanted to help him out and it was like could you read over this thing and tell me what you think of it and it seems like a really important thing because it has to do with some government stuff and it's a hundred and sixteen pages I'm like yeah yeah I mean I've only got like seven of those today so far and it's still morning let me jump right on it so yeah I'm getting hammered right now with with people wanting me to check stuff out and explain Sephora to them and for them and to decode the woke language that is basically forwarded itself into literally every office maybe except not yours in the world but if I tell it if I tell the public that it's not in yours so you guys should just disclaim me right now that you'll get cancelled and we don't want that yeah but we have a plan we're gonna hire Robyn D'Angelo to come we're gonna pay or $15,000 we're gonna double it to defend the white Christians yeah that's pretty rich you know that's there you go yeah it's gonna cost you guys a sense for that we got started here was that you guys probably the Babylon Bee right now it kinda seems to me to have its finger on the pulse of what's going on better than just about anybody so we'll get we'll get some more endorsement from me to really screw you guys over I think put it on your website so okay a couple questions because well first a question I didn't think of it's kind of a personal question no no and I also I don't know if I don't know it's bad really say that I mean because you have your email address and right there on your profile on your on Twitter at least you used to I know if you still do I still do but you keep yourself very open and inviting of people to reach out to you that's right what is the personal reason that you you what do you want but you want that it's like what is your mission what is your goal okay so the original thought behind that was actually that if I had a university affiliation I would have a university email account that would be publicly available people be able to go look it up on my faculty website and find it so people say let ourselves who wanted to get in touch with me would have a direct way to do that so I thought well that's a good idea people do want to get in touch with me and some of that is important and valuable and it is actually worked out quite a lot to my to my benefit and to other people's benefit I also like my Street informants I mean I'm drowning in Street informants right now but I do like my Street informants to it so I kind of have a pulse my finger on the pulse of what's going on you know in in different organizations and and although right now the problem is it's like everybody's forwarding me hey look what my corporation or look at my university department or look what my school or what kids school or whatever look what they've implemented and it's like word for word almost the same thing every time like thousands of times so it'll just kind of become one email now that with the thousand signatories on it it's really kinda crazy so I wasn't quite prepared for the country to descend into woke riots and then everybody to realize that I kind of know some stuff about woke and then everybody to reach out to me at once but I'm hearing that you know like my colleagues like Helen pluckers who did the the grievant Studies papers with me and has told me that she for a while was spending you know more than 10 or 12 hours a day just trying to keep up with an answer emails she was getting and of course she has a public-facing email being editor of area magazine so there are a few of us I'm hearing it from basically everybody who's been speaking up about the potential pitfalls and dangers of the woke ideology I'm hearing it from basically everybody that worked all just getting hundreds and thousands of emails and requests for help and explanation so a lot of people are suddenly aware that something is wrong in the state of Denmark well this episode is brought you by Fiverr and on Fiverr you can get a per own personal secretary for $5 a week they're probably from Russia and they probably won't understand your emails but uh just kidding it's not my we're not respond well I mean I hear ya I actually you know it is a thing and it's actually the the issue with the the pressure is it so much of what's coming to me it's not there is some frivolous stuff but most of its not and so I'm really trying to you know sort through what is and is not important and trying to give you know some some answers where where it's important I mean a lots going on very yeah even if all I do is to reply with a link to my website I think that helps so um yeah nice so what's the coolest story that you've gotten in your email what's the craziest story that's just blown your mind geez man I don't even know if I'm allowed to tell it you know it is actually worse yeah because when you're allowed to tell me are we talking about like a positive story then or uh these aren't cool man those stories are no we want like what yeah we do like stories but Wow is mal here the they're cool like that and I was like mind blowing like yeah I get school is about rocking horrifying I've had a large number of people write to me about their spouses suddenly becoming radicalized especially if they're in interracial relationships and their marriages are like falling apart and they're desperately reaching out to me to ask how to deal with the fact that they're their partner has gone crazy and in specific they're saying you know so I finally asked my wife I finally asked my husband do you think I'm a racist and they've been together you know maybe like 15 years in a lot of these cases 10-15 years and they say things back like well I don't know you well enough to know if you're a racist it's like that's intense that's not the craziest I don't know if I can tell the craziest one I really don't want to get anybody like I don't want to be trained but he's confidence but I think story actually worth telling so it turns out that it's an individual reached out to me who has a rather strongly marginalized sexual identity and and I think gay and trans at the same time and so he has his job everything's going well he gets along with his colleagues they're like work friends right but they're not you know like buddies or whatever but you know he isn't it's working out well then apparently the Department figures out that his sexuality or sexual status and decides they need to have a sensitivity trainer come in to the department so this is what happens I mean I've heard stories where I'm really helpful this is what happens in like all of these things I've had people reach out to me in various racial contexts and this is a particular one though that was was trans and so what happened was they had this coordinator come in and sit down and like they put the guy in like a seat in front of the whole room like the toy room style rooms I'm imagining and explained what it means to be gay and to be trans and like really kind of weirdly clinical woke language and then they went around and they made every person in the room start confessing their homophobia and transphobia as like some kind of an apology so this guy like storms out cuz after like just a few of these it's he's listening to his co-workers talk about how they have these deep-seated prejudices and always have against him and hate his entire way of being in the world and like all this crazy stuff so then he storms out and then after the fact of this sensitivity training it's like people in the office like every relationships now weird it has to be all about that and now they're coming up to them like and I've heard this from again from races you know race sensitivity training aftermath as well so now it's like people are coming up and saying to him you know like man I've spent the last three days really reckoning with how much I hate people like you and it's just like this is his office experience all day and they start asking like trying to be cool or whatever so they start trying to ask him like really invasive questions about his sexuality and sex life like that's his entire office experience now and they're all crying and apologizing and talking about like my religious beliefs prevent me from accepting people like you but I'm trying and it's killing me and it's like they're looking for absolution from him and finally ends up quitting his job he's got chased out of his job by this and like I said I've heard this from several different people in several different contexts I've heard it you know again with race where these people are subjected to these sensitivity cultural responsive trainings or whatever and then they have to sit there and listen to all their their white and often white adjacent whatever that means Brown Asian Hispanic whatever all their colleagues are talking about how they're secretly anti black and they've just discovered it and they all these racist things they've said and done and their lives and it's like halt our bed it's like that just destroys any opportunity that there's gonna be a functional working relationship or professional relationship or human relationship going forward and it's like that's what this stuff is like all these companies companies schools universities like freaking everything is onboarding this stuff like crazy and this is what you're subjecting your your workers to when you start doing these like confession sessions a woman reached out to me an Indian woman and she's telling me that they had to have a brown fragility training at their work and so they came in and surrounding bility yeah it's really even worse than white their agility to it's basically the same thing except you also have to deal with the fact that you're a victim of white supremacy while you're upholding it because brownest has anti blackness built into it also apparently now I am and so things are getting crazy it's getting dark and so anyway they have these trainings or but no I can't I can't you can't say that either bleep that you used to use the Jew word Christian broadcast yeah I know what you're supposed to do when you mess up I was Catholic I know how to do exactly what to do that's what this woman though she emails me and it's like the the other but the other side of it right instead of having to listen to how racist you know you see like your co-workers have secretly been against you for years or whatever according to the doctrine there's this other aspect of the brown fragility training where it's like all right now you all have to start interrogating your anti blackness as brown people and so they separate all brown people made them go through this and then they're interrogating it and then it's like we need to interrogate your feelings of defensiveness let's go around the room and have all of you admit it so imagine you're the person who's like what is this crap you're being 40 like what if you don't have anything to say what if you're like ah I don't I don't really have these feel I've never done that you know you're just gonna get called Alfred refusing to arrogate your feelings and you're gonna get called defensive and the brow fragility or white fragility if you're white or white adjacent fertility or white passing fragility tornado is gonna sweep you up see then you you kind of have to find some story in your past and like gin it up and like of course you're gonna have at least like three or four people and they're already crying by this point and it's what a disaster I mean I keep getting stories told to me about what happens when these things you know really come into the workplace not where it's like oh my company made us sit through a zoom thing and I kind of rolled my eyes the whole time and it's like you know but when when it's like these things are like I don't even know what to call that but it's it's not cool and I don't see how anybody in their right mind believes that this is gonna improve their working environment or educational opportunities or or whatever it's so and then of course what happens if everything it becomes more delicate and everybody's afraid everything that these people have been trained now to see is going to be interpreted as more racism and so all of the department oh the the organization oh the company of the society is even more racist it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy of racism and sexism and transphobia and homophobia and ableism and fatphobia and classism and I mean we could just continue with what judith butler called that exasperation et cetera did Robyn D'Angelo also write Browne fragility I don't know that there's no she's working on a series or not maybe she's gonna do the whole rainbow she actually has quite a few books somebody sent me a paper she wrote in 2013 that talks about white neurosis that's a formal term that all white people have and the racial cray-cray I'm not making that up that's the original cray cray racial cray cray and the racial cray-cray apparently is today what what white people have as a result of their racial neurosis and white fragility their white I'm sorry neurosis and white fragility and so that makes them crazy around the topic of race but then that craziness gets pushed on to people of minority races I'm sorry mine ties to races we forgot that they're being forced to be minoritized which is secretly a way to make sure that even if there's a numerical majority that they're still victims so it's like I don't know what you do I mean this is mental but I think Brown fragility do I just saw it on Twitter a few weeks ago and started hearing it from like immediately and now it's in corporate trainings and and all of this crazy stuff so Brown fragility Brown complicity Brown privilege these things are like the hot things so that they can basically nuke Asians Mexicans and other Hispanics and people from South Asia we're just very backward it's going backwards this I mean this is like like they built a bullet train one of those bullet trains that goes like as fast as an airplane almost straight into like the battle base is what this is like how do we not only how do we go back to like the the very racist past that they're that they use is the only evidence of their stuff which was hundreds of years ago but also like how do we get there literally tomorrow like as fast as humanly possible so it's it's not a it's not a cool thing and yeah people are freaking out and that's so my email is like sort of a nightmare you mentioned in these trainings it it's very common in cults to have a thing where if they put someone in the middle and everybody you either like praises them or a lot of them out they would shame them or you'll break them down until they're like weeping on the floor that's right it sounds so cult-like and I know that you're you talk a lot about how woke ism is a religion and you make you actually did a really detailed detailed youtube video I saw on it figured I just steal that and have you just say it again on here and then people to watch this video instead of that one yeah I mean that's the best way to do it is a recycle my content no actually I've really been pursuing that idea since like two thousand thirteen or fourteen I didn't know it was called woke I don't think it was really called woke ISM at the time or I knew that it was called social justice because I saw that happening right in the community and that they had this project that was like exactly this that was called atheism plus and if he went to their website and looked it up what does it plus what he thought it was it was plus social justice sounds like a streaming service or you Richard Dawkins video drink they would not know it was it was atheism plus social justice and that's why I used to call it religion - as a matter of fact religion - God is what it was and so that was like 2013 I was already like saying that so I've been on this a while and I've written some really deep stuff you know so we can talk about how it acts as a religion in terms of like you know a sociological durkheimian understanding of religion I can talk about in terms of like Kolakowski 's development of mythology and so you have this kind of social entity as Durkheim would describe it that acts like he described religious social entities and then you tack on to a mythological structure as the way the Polish floss for Kolakowski laid it out
lol, "floss for" instead of "philosoper"
and ultimately I think that I've kind of summarized it much more neatly now is that I think that a religion is kind of you know it's a sociological object with a lot of things happening and so on and so forth but with its key key project is is to provide moral law which we would easily distinguish in the world today from secular law secularism is a separation of moral law firm' state law is to the degree that that's possible and now you have something that's definitely pushing a very clear moral law and is trying to enforce it within its own precepts but it's also trying to take state power so secularism actually very kind of neatly applies here but I mean most people don't really respond to that abstract stuff they want to hear stuff like being woke you know awoke and if you will as being born again and they want to hear they want your stuff like that privilege operates in a parallel capacity to the Calvinist concept of depravity or total depravity which is not sinning but it's the want to sin it's the corrupt nature that makes you want to sin so with privilege you have the corrupt nature to want to maintain your own in this case obvious or racial or sexual superiority and so you have you know a lot of concepts that run in parallel that way you you know kind of this vague concept of social justice that acts as kind of a god figure and then you have it split into tripartite diversity equity and inclusion that actually spells out Dei D which is Latin for God and it's like that's weird that's a bit weird you know yeah so I mean you actually there are tough people love to hear these kinds of parallels how people look at what's going on I don't see witch hunts is hard to say on rogon I wouldn't Rogan last week and maybe you guys caught that I don't know but I talked about how there are kind of like up religions and down religions in a sense and like an up religion is looking up to God and is aware of sin and is trying to you know do right but their focus is on that harmony that that that healing that Redemption that grace that forgiveness that comes with looking up to you know the perfect Almighty Creator sky Danny trying that image yeah the sky daddy does you would as you would you know at least a Zeus have lightning bolts I don't know what this one's doing we've got it all you're just a guy daddy yeah but no down religions though are obsessively looking at like the profane the sin the dirt they live them even ed story like that and yeah sort of like that and so this is you know you mentioned the word call it's very like idolatrous where now this worldly saying I know I get the low getting to talk to Christians and get a little theological with this flex my is on credit but no it's it's it's like this worldly thing race identity and so on becomes an idol and like you said they're very cult-like dynamic so some of my emails that I've had are from these Jehovah's Witnesses are like I know this I know what's happening here the separating you from your group breaking you down emotionally to try to fill you in you know to get you to feel vulnerability guilt and shame and so on and fill in the resolution of that with the doctrine that you then just keep deepening that's a cult tactic that's not a religious tactic religions you know I mean as far as I understand Christianity the idea is like hey we're here we have this truth and if you want to want to partake in that it's good and come on in but then you always have those huckster dudes who are like you know what do you call somebody who lies a liar which commandment does that do you want to go to hell you want to burn in hell for eternity comfort you need Jesus Christ Yeah right I mean you can even start naming people who are kind of in that vein I can't remember who the very famous person who actually did that like one of those names it was an infamy and they probably ended up you know getting caught some pedophilia scam or something like that something bad but there's always like this this temptation to cults that are determine epilating vulnerability and especially guilt shame and then trying to stuff a doctrine on top of it I mean Calvinism says that humans are fallen but it also speaks mostly if grace and Calvinism is one of the harder core Christian denominations looking at this right so it does admit humans fall in nature but it also speaks of you know grace at least irresistible grace for the elect if nothing else and then using that as a model since it's not known who is and who is not elect to any but God so therefore it is a model for everybody to try to aspire to in order to try to you know hopefully be led in that direction so there's there's a difference between you know a religion and some poisonous cult thing and this thing like I get people are like I'm a next Scientologist alarm bells going off and then they're like I was in this weird backwards Christian cult was some lunatic that had his whole thing and alarm bells going off I was your hope as witness alarm bells going off I was in communist Romania I talked to a guy the other day a Romanian guy he was like this is bad you know this is it yeah this is this is a thing that's setting off the alarm bells of people who have escaped cults or escaped communists which is called circumstances and so yeah it's a it's a bad it's a bad place and you know people are getting ashamed and these weird things we described already in these meetings and what follows after them it's just really a not bad bad thing so Robyn D'Angelo would be the Joel Osteen of woke ISM my piece and then she's a he's cashing in the difference is I don't know if Joel Osteen believes it like I don't know but I think Robyn D'Angelo does believe it I think this exact oh yeah in fact I don't it's past sincere I know you're not allowed I'm not a psychologist so I can do what I want you're not allowed to diagnose people from a distance but there's actually I don't know if you guys know that there's actually a religious form of OCD that's called scrupulosity it's very common themes it's not - yeah it does it has like something like yeah yeah please come on stay with me that's exactly that's Robyn D'Angelo the whole thing he could make like a like I'm a Monopoly board put her head scrupulosity but no the deal is that it's religious OCD where basically you feel like you haven't you haven't resolved your own complicity and sin correctly and therefore your family for the Hellfire right and it's actually super common and Catholics it's somewhat common in Mormons and you sometimes see it and the stricter variants of Calvinism and I don't know it probably shows up in Islam as well I actually just don't know on that but it is a form of OCD where you're trying to like ow out damn spot Lady Macbeth yourself for your complicity in sin and I think that D'Angelo whose mother was a elapsed nun who went on to become a leftist social activist I do think that the Angelo that's not even a real last name has has exhibits a rather strong case of scrupulosity and to read white fragility is basically a hundred and fifty seven or eight page confession of that and then projection of it on to all white people it seems like another way that woke ISM tends to be like a cult is this control of language you know like all really changing I'll click on some thread of progressives that are debating you know am i racist are you racist and the words they use the terms that are you know redefined or invented terms it's bizarre oh yeah the that's I mean that's why I'm writing the encyclopedia on oh I got to do my like little stick you know like hi James Lindsay new discourses calm never got any cyclopædia their translations from the walkush social justice cyclopædia new discourses calm as my commercials but no you can go on there and I have a since Christmas I started at Christmas and I started writing a social justice encyclopedia because of this problem of the terminology and so many terms there are specialized terms and all of this other stuff you know that are just academic terms with so many terms were all familiar with everyday language racist anti racist fascist anti fascist diversity equity inclusion justice social justice critical all of these terms have like very specialized different meanings so you know they say well we need to engage critically with this you know so if somebody publishes something and I say well we need to engage critically with this and and everybody that's kind of grown up learning critical thinking in schools is like yeah critical thinking that's very good we need to do that but what they mean when they say we do engage critical this is something different what they actually mean is we need to find all the problem attics in it and turn it into a woke thing we need to burn out all the woke nests when they say we need diversity what they mean is we need diversity of authentic voices which here we still sound good but what they define is an authentic voice as somebody that is authentically representing they're oppressed systemically oppressed identity as described by the critical social justice theory in ideology so what they mean is people who have different identity markers but who can speak the way that they say that you have to speak about having those identity markers so diversity means lots of critical theorists of different colors and a minimal number of them who happen to be white allies who they rather intensely excoriate so I mean the whole thing is this giant rabbit hole of twisty turvy language and and then like you guys said with the cult thing right so often the the mechanism that drags people into cults it's not how you you really do like cult control but it's it's that manipulation of vulnerability so one of the maneuvers is you say oh well I'm not racist you know I think this and that and you'd get into the whole thing and they say you don't even know what racism means so they immediately make you feel stupid right that's what racism used to mean but we have a much more sophisticated updated definition out and you don't even know what it is so how are you gonna say you're not racist if you don't even know what the definition of racism is this is a much more complicated thing you don't even understand systemic racism and the systemic nature and structural nature and then they're bombarding you with this kind of like gish Gallup flower but I don't know if you can say that in Christian land yeah so they are they're bombarding you with this and they're making you feel inferior and dumb and then how are you gonna resolve that you're gonna go find out what the definition means and you have to properly engage with it which means engage with it the way they tell you to and if you don't then you haven't engaged with it properly that's all through their literature so it's this weird bullying thing where they're using specialized language but they're also creating a massive amount of vulnerability around people by trying to make them feel stupid and inferior for not understanding the stuff that they're talking about which kind of gets updated or approximately every like 45 minutes so it's kind of hard to keep up
I'm getting to be quite impressed with the Babylon Bee.
lol, "floss for" instead of "philosoper"
next part