SIO185: The NZ Attack Blame Game

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode one eighty-five. I am your host, Thomas Smith. And despite the fact that I had an interview lined up, I think I am going to put that off and talk about the shooting in New Zealand. I think it just touches on too many important things, too many things related to the show, people related to the show, people related to atheism, and all kinds of stuff that I just have a lot of opinions on and I want to talk about it. But you know, first things first, it's so hard, you know, doing research for this. It's just the the saddest thing. And one thing that was particularly horrible for me reading about this shooting is just that the idea, you know, everything is worse now.

0:01:17 Thomas: And, you know, I'm sure it is for a lot of you, too. Everything is worse. Now, every bad thing that happens in the world is so much harder for me now that I have, you know, a precious little baby that I love to death. It just makes it that much much worse every time something bad happens and it's, it's really hard. Um, but yeah, just the, the idea that a bunch of people who, you know, probably with their family or their kids are going to the place that they go to do the thing that they do on, on that particular, uh, day, you know, it, it just, uh. So something about that really struck me like, you, you. I can't imagine, And I have the great benefit of being somebody who is not going to be targeted for something like this.

0:02:09 Thomas: I mean, you never know who knows what will happen in the world. But as of right now, a white dude who's kind of, you know, is an atheist, doesn't go to church, doesn't do anything like that. There's no place that I take my daughter to that I have to worry about. Will it be the target of a hate-fueled attack today? And it's an immense bit of privilege to not have to worry about that. But it's also just so sad to empathize and think about what happened. It's just horrible. It makes me really sad to think about. So it's an awful thing.

0:02:52 Thomas: Also, another quick take. I just wish there weren't guns. You know, I tweeted that and I got the usual apologetics about whatever nonsense, home defense, whatever. I just I mean, I know it's it's pointless to say, but I still say it like I just not not it's not that I wish there was more gun control. I just don't. There shouldn't be guns. I wish they didn't exist on the world. Yes, I know it's unrealistic. There's no, it's not going to happen. You know, guns are here. They're not going away. But I just wish they didn't exist. I really do. And, you know, same goes for a lot of, I guess, weaponry that exists on our planet. You know, I'm not expressing like a political view that I think it's at all realistic that we're going to completely get rid of guns, but I just wished we could.

0:03:42 Thomas: I wish they didn't exist. Any step toward that, for me, is a step in the right direction. And I'm sure you've seen that New Zealand is already taking steps to just ban any sort of automatic or semi-automatic weapons, might talk more about that at a later date, we'll see, I had someone contact me who has some expertise on it that I might do an interview with, we will see if that pans out, but I don't, I'm not going to talk about gun control today, I want to talk talk about a couple of things.

The biggest topic I think is this quote unquote blame game. I have a lot of thoughts on that. Some you might not agree with. We'll see. But before I get to that, there's one kind of miscellaneous thing about the shooting and it's a big topic. You know, I've had experience ever since debating Carl and interacting with a certain segment of the the online community, Um, you know, I've had a little bit of experience with those people and people who do quote-unquote shit posting and trolling and all that. And it's a, it's a kind of, it is a segment of the population to whom, you know, for whom everything is a joke. Like nothing is not a joke, nothing can be serious. Um, nothing can be heartbreaking. Nothing can be sad. It's all a joke, it's all funny.

And that's a group of people that I detest and I want nothing to do with. And it's hard because on one hand, I don't want to say like anyone who is that way is complicit in some sort of attack like this. I don't want to say that. But it is hard not to see that ideology and that way of being as

0:05:23 Thomas: Incredibly toxic and leading to the atmosphere of the killing and being a sort of an incubator for people like this. You know, they, they, there's... there's a lot of these right-wing killers out there now, it's it's growing and growing, it's more of a threat than in, in America anyway, uh, looks a little bit different in different parts of the world, but in the U.S. obviously right-wing terror is more of threat than any other kind of terrorism right now, and I think this is a big part of it. And I just want to put this to you, dear listener.

Imagine if it was like 2004, 2003, 2004, sometime after 9-11, but a few years after. And just imagine that you hear of a website, like there's a news report or something. Thing. There's a website where people are meeting and talking about, you know, that how there ought to be like death to infidels. Uh, they're cheering on the 9-11 attacks. If ever, there's a little terrorist attack, like an, uh, like a Muslim, at least a rat, a jihadist, whatever you want to call it. Radical, uh. Islamic terrorist attack in this particular, on this particular website, site, it's cheered on and encouraged and, uh, you know, ideas about attacks are posted and,

0:06:48 Thomas: Um, manifestos are posted. I just want you to imagine how that would be treated. You know, like how, how would that have been treated, especially back under Republican rule, which I guess, you know, we are back under now, but, but back under, uh, forget all the Trump component to it, just think about back, back in those days, back in the Bush days, how that would have been treated.

I mean, you would have, if you would've seen this on an episode of 24 or something, it would be like, well, we've, we've done, we've poured millions of dollars into tracking down anyone who's ever logged into this website, and we're going to find them and interrogate them. Furthermore, we might, we might, uh, we'll probably take them over to, um, Guantanamo Bay, just make sure they're, you know, we'll interrogate them and find out who the terrorists are and ask them if they know them and all that.

Like, that wouldn't have seemed out of place in the post-9/11 era to me. I, I don't think that's crazy of me to say, and yet, with this 8chan bullshit, you know, I guess, I'm, I don't know the, that much about this, I do know, I did read that, you know, 8chan is 4chan, but 8chan is a little newer and it was developed more with a Gamergate focus, which surprise, surprise, that those people aren't like the cream of the crop in terms of society. And on this 8chan website, this is where this shooter was active, posted a lot of stuff, and the attack was celebrated there, you know, and you see some of these posts, and some people, it might be true that they don't know if it's a joke or not, but one thing we've learned in the era of Trump is that there's

0:08:33 Thomas: No such thing, I've said it on this show, there's no such thing as ironic Nazis. If you are willing to be an ironic Nazi, you're willing to be a Nazi.

Like, there's a same thing with this white power, uh, hand signal, you know, there might have been a time when it seemed like a joke, maybe, what you know, maybe when it first came out someone was making a joke or something, it might have started as a joke, and I'm willing to believe that maybe some people who didn't believe in like white power were doing it at first.

Now who is the joke on if the joke is that like, oh, when we do this people think we're white nationalists, and also there's actually some white nationalists who do it, uh, and this terrorist attacker did it, and so it's a real funny joke to do it, right? Because, and it's like, what, what is the joke there, what do you see as the punch line, who is it funny to and why, you know, because all I see there is some people who are willing to do a little hand signal that, like, terrorists are doing, and like actual white supremacists are doing. Maybe it didn't start that way, but, you know, now, like, so if you're willing to still do that, if you think it's funny to still ironically flash a white power hand signal, then, as far as I'm concerned, you're not any better than a white supremacist.

Yeah, this 8chan website, I'm seeing reports that New Zealand is, all a little preliminary, but that they're, they're maybe trying to block it, and, yeah, I mean, it's, it, I guess this censorship thing can be a touchy area, but again, just imagine if this was a den of, instead of being a den of white supremacist thieves, if it's just a, a, you know, a website where, um, radical Muslims are, uh, being radicalized and trying to radicalize others and posting about you.

0:10:26 Thomas: Like, imagine how we would treat it. It's just, it's crazy to me. I don't, anyway. One more little miscellaneous thing before I get to the main topic, you know, there was that, that, uh, newspaper that did the big headline that was like, he was a sweet baby and now he turned into the killer kind of thing, and I think rightfully so, especially when you compare it to their coverage of, uh Islamic terrorism, rightfully, so they were absolutely hammered online, but, you, know, I was thinking about that, and, well, again, they shouldn't do that, and then it should absolutely be hammered. I think what we all want is consistency. Whether it's how Islamic terrorism is treated versus white nationalist terrorism, I would like some consistency there.

0:11:14 Thomas: Or maybe it's how black criminals in the US are treated and portrayed versus white criminals. Black criminals, it's always the mugshot. It's always always the worst possible photo, the whatever white people think looks the scariest, the mugshot, the whatever. And then white criminals frequently, frequently, not always, frequently it's a picture of them at their best. And the fact that it's like, oh yeah, this, this fall from grace, this whatever. We want consistency. People want consistency, I 100% do. But I was thinking about it. And feel free to disagree with me on this, but I wonder if really it ought to be, like, which way would you rather have it?

0:12:00 Thomas: Like, what consistency would you rather have? And I wonder if it would be better if all criminals and slash all terrorists were treated like, oh, this person had potential and what went wrong, versus, here's a scary terrorist, slash, here's a serious criminal and they're evil kind of thing. And I, I absolutely want to acknowledge the fact that people bring this up when it goes the, the wrong way.

They want to, you know, like they only seem to bring it up in relation to, like, for example, Paul Manafort gets a, gets a light sentence, and then everyone's like, well, why are sentences so harsh to begin with, maybe they shouldn't be this harsh. It's like, okay, were you saying that when a black person was caught with a little bit of pot? You know, like there's that element to it, and I want to acknowledge that fully, um, but I, I wonder, it's It, like, like demonizing these people, I don't know, serves anybody, you know, when we try to turn our killers and our terrorists of any kind, on any side, anywhere, into like a cartoon evil bad guy, I don't know that that makes it better than what might be a totally accurate article.

By the way, if I, if, if you write an article about a criminal or a terrorist and about how they actually were, maybe they were a really well-liked person, you know, maybe they, they were somebody who at one time in their lives had accomplished a lot, and It, I think it might be interesting journalism to write that article of any potential killer. When you're trying to track down what went wrong here, what did they do?

0:13:47 Thomas: And the answer to that might be, well, they got radicalized into white supremacy, and that should be the focus. To take nothing away from the fact that they were an awful white supremacist, it would still be interesting to me, and I think it it would still be valid journalism to say, hey, how did this nice kid turn into a white supremacist? You know, but we want consistency. Like, I would hope we would treat everybody that way. I would help we would, you know, a Muslim, maybe a white. How would how did this nice person that everybody likes, successful person, turn radical? You know that that's also valid and would be interesting. But what we see is, you know, of course, a great contradiction and an inconsistency, which tends to correspond to race, which of course I think is biased and is harmful.

0:14:39 Thomas: All right, so now I want to get to the main topic, which is, you know, the, the blame game, um, This is interesting, I, I have a ton of thoughts about this. Thank you for watching. You know, when this first happened, the killer's manifesto was posted on, again, 8chan, where the attack was cheered, and people read through it, and I think there were, at first, a few knee-jerk reactions to what later on turned out to be some trolling by the asshole killer, troll, everything's a joke, haha, nihilist asshole killer. Very much part of that 8chan 4chan online culture, and things like the Candace Owens line.

Um, I think there were some people who leapt onto that and just took it at face value when I actually, I don't, you know, by now it seems that everybody, most people agree, but I I I think that was a joke, I don't think that person was trying to say Candace, I think that person was trying to pit people against each other, the killer. But I got a side note, did you see Candace Owens' response to this, because wow, like that's not, that's not how you human being, Candace Owens, like, seriously.

So, here's how the story goes, you know, terrorist killer kills, at the time, it was like 40, the kill count kept going up, but, yeah, it's gonna be, I think it's, still could be climbing, a lot of people in critical condition, as of now, I've seen 51, as of now, but anyway, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 people, and in the manifesto, Candace Owens is named, and here, her response is, capital, all caps, LOL, LOL.

0:16:20 Thomas: LOL, fact, I've never created any content espousing my views on the Second Amendment or Islam. The left pretending I inspired a mosque massacre in New Zealand because I believe black America can do it without government handouts is the reachiest reach of all reaches, capital LOL.

0:16:40 Thomas: First off, it's not true that she hasn't made any content espousing her views on Second Amendment and Islam. People covered that. But secondly, I even agree that, I again, oh, I, I think that the killer was joking when he, when he mentioned Candace Owens, it seems like it's an ironic, everything's a joke, trying to, you know, troll the libs or whatever, uh, you know, but still, LOL, capital, it just gives you an idea of how awful some of these people are. Like if this happened to me, like, you know, and it's, it's not zero percent that someone, it's like 0.01, but it's not impossible that some asshole trollish killer would be like, I'm going to name, I don't know, the Opening Arguments podcast, to try to get people to hate the, who knows, some random ass thing.

0:17:29 Thomas: Let's say that happens. And if I were named in one of these manifestos, first off, I would be a devastated person for a while, I think it would, would have a real effect, but I think my response would have to be, uh, you know, I am incredibly disturbed that this person named me or anything to do with me in their manifesto. I understand people's reaction, but I've read through it, I think, I think they were being ironic or trying to stir up trouble for me personally and to try to get people to hate each other and to get people to, me, um, I, I don't think an honest reading of this would really suggest that I directed this or was in any way responsible. I can tell you that my response would not start with capital LOL.

0:18:14 Thomas: God, what a wow. What a what a weird, troubling thing. You know, like I take a moment to have some compassion and be like, all right, at face value, you've been named in a murderer's manifesto. Yes, it might be ironic. Probably was ironic. But take a second and act like a human. So, in terms of a blame game, this is, this, is what spiraled out of control, you know, there's the Chelsea Clinton thing, and I tweeted a bit about that, I, you, know, it's tough, I think the Pod Save America people also talked about this, how do you make something, how, do you address something, but in a way that doesn't make it the conversation, because, so, I mean, if you didn't see it, some, some people yelled at Chelsea Clinton and, and said her rhetoric is, is like to blame for the terrorist attack, which I think is insane, saying.

0:19:09 Thomas: And the only thing they could cite was a single tweet. The only thing I found anywhere that, that her quote-unquote Islamophobic, you know, attitudes was a tweet about Ilhan Omar that said, you know, I, I would expect our politicians not to traffic and anti-Semitism as a response to some of the stuff we can have that debate. You know, I think the stuff Omar said was, you know, not, not well chosen. And to somebody like Chelsea Clinton, who is married to a Jewish, Jewish man. I don't see it as unreasonable for her to be critical of some of that language. And they met, they came to an understanding. Omar apologized. It seems like everything worked out fine to me there.

I mean, Omar can continue to criticize APAC in the Jewish lobby, but she should probably do so, well aware of the tropes that have been used against Jewish people in the past, that all seems fine to me, like, it all seems like a happy ending for everybody, except people who, you know, want an excuse to hate Omar, and I put Ben Shapiro, one of the most hypocritical things you could do, Ben Shapiro thinks that Omar, Mr. Anti-Identity Politics, whatever, thinks as a Jew that Omar is just an obvious anti-Semite, for like a couple things she said that were, by my reading, problematic, but once clarified, seem okay to me. And she apologized for the part that wasn't.

0:20:43 Thomas: But people on the right who want Omar to go away have all of a sudden become the, you know, the Meghan McCain crying over anti-Semitism, using white tears to advance her right-wing causes, stuff like that is very bad faith and all that, but anyway, the confrontation between Omar and Chelsea Clinton seems to me works out for everybody, because Omar, you know, apologize, clarified. That's cool. Omar still has totally valid critique of Israel and AIPAC and other things like that, but going to do so with better language. They came to an understanding. All seems fine. But no, these people are yelling at Chelsea Clinton. Now, here's the thing.

0:21:29 Thomas: I think one thing we can all agree on, I would hope everybody in the world would pretty much agree on, is that this terrorist attack shouldn't be about Chelsea Clinton. Like, we shouldn't be talking about Chelsea Clinton right now. This shouldn't be the focus of it. And it's, it's a little bit of a problem that it turns into that. But how do we, how can anyone address that? Yes, this thing shouldn't, shouldn't be a conversation without making it into a conversation.

It's a really annoying problem in this day and age. And I just think it's a fact, it's, it's a fact of social media and just what can happen and how many bad faith people can kind of spiral the conversation however they want, you know, enough of them. It's tough. It is a difficult problem.

But I think it's important to talk about, not because we all need to rush to Hillary Clinton's defense, and I saw a lot of people bringing the fact that, like, she's, she is well-off, she is wealthy, What are you, all, she doesn't need your help, you know, like it's, it's all totally okay for them to yell at her, she has money. Just thinking, like, what, I mean, again, yes, if you want to say that she shouldn't be at the top of our list of people we need to sympathize and empathize with right now, totally agreed. And that's a problem. It's hard to not turn her into the focus. I want to try not to.

But like, if you're then also, if your converting that sentiment into, yes, it's fine for anyone to yell at her for bad reasons because she has power, that yell in her face, you know, it just seems, is that how the world should work? I don't know. I think people should be reasonable from time to time. And if there's a reasonable grievance, if you're actually yelling in the face of power, I have no problem with that.

0:23:12 Thomas: I'm not one of those tone-policing guys. Like, yes, but it has to be a real grievance. Like, you can't yell about something made up. I can't just go yell at somebody who has no responsibility for anything. You have to have some semblance of, you know, like being right, I think. I don't know. It just seems to me. So where, where's the line?

I guess the point of this episode is talking about blame and, and how much, who we should blame, who shouldn't blame, and, uh, what some people have said about it. I, I'm firmly in the, Chelsea Clinton really has nothing to do with this, uh side, but where do we go?

Do we, do we, go as far as Douglas Murray, who wrote an article that was then retweeted by Maajid Nawaz, and Maajid decided to write the same article, apparently, it's kind of like these people decide like, oh, that was a good thing to say. Say, if I read this, I better just write the same thing. Then I'll get some clicks. Kind of weird. He wrote an article about how nobody's to blame. It's bizarre. The Douglas Murray view, the Douglas Murray article, it literally says in the title, it's not clear that anyone is to blame, no one's to blame except the shooter. Nobody is to buy. So that would be the extreme other side. I suppose you could say.

That's the, no one's, here, I'll actually quote, quote, apart from the Christ church gunman himself, it isn't clear that anyone else is responsible for the massacre, end quote. So I guess that's one extreme side, I'll come back to that, and then there's, there are a lot of people, uh, talking about Sam Harris in times like these, you know, and, and I think this is a time when the popular conversation borders on what we talk about here, borders on atheism, borders on new atheism.

0:24:59 Thomas: So it's something I want to talk about, uh, you know, because Sam Harris, does, does he have any blame for this? Where do, what do people feel like? I think that a lot, lot of the people who tend to be on my side of issues are perfectly content in blaming Sam Harris. I'm not entirely sure I feel exactly the same. I think we can talk about blame, and I think that Sam Harris has some culpability, but maybe not in the same way. Here's what I want to make clear. We need to address somewhat the order of importance. It's weird to me that a lot of people, a lot of articles were written in the wake of this that were like, terrorist attack, white supremacy, Islamophobia, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson and, and like, you know, Bill Maher.

0:25:55 Thomas: And like, it's, it's hard because I agree with some of the sentiments and I'll get to specifically where I think perhaps Sam Harris is like the most to blame. I'm going to talk about it, uh, what particular thing he said in a minute, but like, we do need to somewhat put this in perspective. I mean, this killer was Australian and we've got an Australian politician who literally came out after the, like his first statement was, this attack is what happens when you have Muslims in your country, like blame the attack on Muslims. So let's just, just be clear on our order of operations here in like who, uh, just, just to make absolutely sure. Uh, I think it's unfair to leap straight into Sam Harris territory when it comes to Islamophobia, when there are far, far worse offenders that you, you ought to address first, that you at least touch on first.

0:26:48 Thomas: I think like here's, here's who is outright awful. There's, there's this politician, Fraser Anning, he was part of this One Nation Party, so I had to figure this out, and apologies to my Australian friends who probably already know this better, but this Fraser Anning guy, who's just awful, some people leapt up and said, well, don't worry, don't blame Australians, he only got 19 votes, or something like that.

And it took a minute of digging to try to figure this out for an American, because it's It's a very different system over there, um, to figure out what in the world that meant. And here's, here, I'll explain it real quickly in my words and let me know if I get this wrong, but I think I have it.

Um, they've got one of those systems where, you know, you, you get representation based on the proportion of votes and this one nation party got Got enough votes, and this is horrifying, because this is a terrible party, but it got, I'm looking at it here, 592,000, it made up, that's looking like 5.26% of the vote, up 3.75% from, I guess, the last election, so, you know, that, 5% is not a ton, but, yeah, still not, not great, it doesn't reflect that great on the country of Australia, but you know 5%, whatever, but anyway, because of the way the elections work, So that meant the One Nation Party got two Senate seats in Queensland and two in other places.

0:28:17 Thomas: And so of the two, so the weird quirk that made it so that this guy got in with 19 votes was like, I guess in terms of outright votes in the preferential voting system, only 19 people decided that this Fraser Anning was like yeah, he's my guy. But because of this weird thing that I've talked with uh Jake about, and I'll be talking with Jake again in the future, Jake, far, far Wharton, who lives in Australia, because of this weird controversy where it's like, nobody who holds dual citizenship or citizenships of another country can be, can hold office or whatever, this weird thing that happened, and then it turned out a bunch of people's, it kind of backfired, and like a bunch of a bunch of people, like a lot of people, people had dual citizenship with like, you know, the UK or some some other place.

0:29:08 Thomas: And so they were not allowed. They were kicked out of office. And so because of that, some combination of that. And I think there was another corruption thing. The top two people who are going to be seated for the One Nation Party were like disqualified. And so Fraser Anning was like the last one, you know, the third one in line. And so that's why he has a seat. But still, that One Nation party did get to seat him. So it's weird to be like, oh, no, nobody likes him. He only 19 people is like, well, yeah, but like enough people voted for that party to get him in there. So there is some constituency there. It's not like, you know, if it were my point is if it weren't Fraser Anning, it would have been someone else who was almost equally terrible. That's my that's the point I'm trying to make.

0:29:54 Thomas: So I don't know why I bothered saying all this, but that's, I just, I looked it up and now you have to know it, too. But this guy, Fraser Anning, gave a speech that, uh, literally used the words, final solution, uh, referring, in, in reference to the Muslim problem, so like, not a great guy, not great guy. In fact, I think he might have been, he might be too racist for that party, because he left the One Nation party, uh shortly after that, so, that's always, I guess, I, guess that is one thing that can be said for that part, is that guy's too racist, for it. But more likely, he's not too racist for it, it's just he said the quiet part out loud, so like, well, you kinda said a little too much, like, you gotta, you got a dog whistle here, dog whistle with me, because that's how you stay in power, you have to maintain that plausible deniability, you said final solution, that's maybe a little far, that was a little to loud of a dog-whistle.

0:30:46 Thomas: So we got that horrible person, we got, um, Bob Katter, who's another Australian political figure who said that, you know, that speech, the final solution speech was like a thousand percent correct, so like, there's, the point is, there are people who are, I think, maybe more directly in line of blame than Sam Harris. Like, if your first response to this was, oh, Sam Harris, it's a little weird to me, like, we do need to put, as much as, you We have our pet projects, you know, and we certainly, as atheists, and I'm guilty of this too, we have our focuses. We have people we focus on. We have other people that we read. And I want to say too, we do tend to focus on the people we think we could maybe reach and the people who we think should know better.

0:31:36 Thomas: So that's a very real thing. But it is important to note that like there's a long line of people, a long, long line of people who are to blame before Sam Harris, in my opinion, a long line, all of Fox News, you know, for one, and that's even, you're, that's, even after all the horrible racists in Australia who, who might be potentially helping out, but we got the, we got, the 8chan, 8chan people, we've got the 4chan people, get the, all the Fox News, we have Tucker Carlson, like, there's a lot of people, so I do want to guess, I'm, I kind of throwing a bone to the Sam Harris fans, understand that I think we need to put it in perspective. However, I think that there is some amount of blame here, and this is where I'm going to come back the other way.

0:32:22 Thomas: And what I've seen happen is, uh, Douglas Murray and then Maajid Nawaz are putting Sam Harris and, uh—and—and for that matter, Jordan Peterson. Um, I—I think Jordan Peterson is way to the right of Sam Harris, so I— I would blame Jordan Peterson more. But I'll focus on Sam Harris because he's who I know. No, he's who was part of the movement. He's who someone I read and revered for a long time. So that's kind of why I focus on that.

But I think he has some blame. And to put him in the category of Chelsea Clinton is not right. And that is something that these articles do. Douglas Murray's article and Maajid Nawaz's article. Look at these people. They're blaming Chelsea Clinton and Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. And aren't they crazy? I mean, can you believe that Chelsea Clinton would have anything to do with this? And they're kind of using that to whitewash everybody involved. And I think categorically Chelsea Clinton is nowhere in the same realm of potential Islamophobia as Sam Harris. So I think there's some blame. Here's where I think the biggest problem is. Here's what I think absolutely, even on the friendliest reading of Sam Harris, this is something that he needs to apologize for. Or he should recognize. And so I know I have some Sam Harris fans who listen. You know, if anyone could reach him with this, it would be important. He wrote in 2006, he wrote in Letter to a Christian Nation the following insane sentence.

0:33:56 Thomas: This is from Letter to a Christian Nation, 2006, quote, Islam is now the fastest-growing religion in Europe. The birth rate among European Muslims is three times that of their non-Muslim neighbors. If current trends continue, France will be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow, end quote. I Pause on that, keep that in your mind, that quote in your mine, when I read this from the Washington Post, this quote, quote, The alleged Christchurch shooter's loathsome manifesto is called the Great Replacement, a common trope of white supremacists. He complained of mass immigration and higher fertility rates of the immigrants, leading to complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people.

0:34:44 Thomas: As specific motivations for the attack, he cited the death of a little girl in Sweden in 2017, Islamic State-inspired truck attack, the defeat of Marine Le Pen in the 2017 French election, and the presence in France of invaders, meaning Muslim immigrants.

0:35:03 Thomas: Yikes. Yipes, yikes, yipes. That, that would, if I were Sam Harris, that would make me feel, I would probably vomit if I realized that a mass murderer was writing the same things I was writing. And it would be one thing if this were true. So like, if it turns out that the mass murderer said, "Hey," and quote, uh, you know, Sam Harris said the sky is blue and therefore I'm killing people.

You'd be like, well, yeah, I just said a fact, I can't, you can't really blame me for saying the sky is blue. Like, how is that, how is that gonna, but it's not. Here's the problem with that quote about France, it's insane, it's, it's not even sourced, and it's in 2006. He said that France could, now he said, Could. And all his, the Sam Harris sycophants, uh, latch on to that language as though that absolves the whole thing, as though, as though when you, when you use some racial, uh, racialized weird great replacement language, but because you said "could," you know, like that, that's fine, he said "could," he said good. This was in 2006. He said in 25 years could be majority Muslim. Here we are in 2019, 13 years later. So, you know, a little over halfway on his timeframe. France is 8.8% Muslim. And by the way, he said, even if immigration were frozen, were halted, which it hasn't been. So they count that out even more against this insane prediction.

0:36:39 Thomas: So if I were Sam Harris and I found out that I had passed to my readers in 2006, I had perpetuated a kind of a racist false fact, you know, an alarmist white genocide type statistic that is nowhere near true. And it also appeared in a manifesto of a mass murder, that would, that's, here's what I'm saying. I'm not saying that means Sam Harris is a murderer and he's responsible and whatever. I am saying he really ought to address that. He re I, I feel like at, at least on the, on the most Sam Harris favorable interpretation of everything, he ought to come out and say, rather than do what he did, which is get incredibly defensive and say everybody is out to get him.

0:37:33 Thomas: And he, I listened to his latest episode, everything. Listen, I'm in danger. My life's in danger because someone mentioned me and mentioned this, by the way. This is what Omer Aziz, who's his enemy, who he had a recording on. I read Omer Aziz's article. Sam Harris quoted it in the New York Times. It's a New York times op-ed thingy. And Sam Harris read it as though like my life's In danger because of this. Like how dare he spread these falsehoods. Omer Aziz just quoted this. He said, look at what Sam Harris said. Instead, if I don't, you think it at the very least, at the very least even if you're the biggest Harris fan, the very least you ought to come out and say, hey, I don't know where I got that stat. That was irresponsible. It's not even close to right. It's clearly not right. Look at what's happened. Look at the current numbers. They're not even close.

0:38:21 Thomas: And furthermore, it seems as though people who are into like the white genocide concept are quoting stuff like this. So I just want to distance myself from this and apologize for having put that out there. Uh, that was wrong. And of course, uh, I, I don't agree with this and I don't agree. You know, like, don't you think you ought to do that at a minimum? I need to correct something I just said, you know, it wasn't the Omer Aziz thing that mentioned this, here was the Omer Aziz quote that was even less, like, fear-inducing, you, know, like if Harris's position is that these people are endangering his life by even mentioning him in connection, here's what Omer Aziz said, the About the word Islamophobia, Sam Harris called it an intellectual blood libel that only serves to shield Islam from criticism, that's pretty much the extent, that, that all, the whole mention, it's the rest, after that, after I wrote a series of articles critical of Mr.

0:39:17 Thomas: Harris, a young white man from California emailed me to tell me he carried a gun, what kind did I carry, he asked, which, yeah, I, I can tell you that those fans of Sam Harris exist, so none of that seems to me to be particularly out of bounds or like inciting violence against Sam Harris. The other article that actually mentioned the thing I was talking about before mentioned the France stat. That was an Intercept article. I confused the two for a second there. Sorry about that. This is the Intercept. Another article, by the way, that Sam Harris criticized as bringing him into this and endangering him. It just says this. This rhetoric about foreign pollution also emanates from the mouths and pens ends of supposedly liberal public figures. In 2006, the New Atheist writer Sam Harris wrote an article claiming that within 25 years, France was on a course to have a Muslim majority population, even if immigrants were to stop tomorrow.

0:40:12 Thomas: This demographic shift would mean nothing less than an end to democracy in itself, he argued. Harris did not deem it necessary to provide a citation for this ludicrous population projection. End of mentioning Harris. That's it. It. So I think the criticism in these articles of Harris, I think has been rather tame. You know, like they're sure you can find people online saying Harris has blood on his hands or something. You find people saying more extreme stuff. You can always find that though. We can all find that on any side of anything. I frequently talk about that on this show. If you want, you can find idiots saying extreme, whatever that serves you. Or you find people that are saying the right It's all there. It's everywhere. But if we talk about the more major media sources, so the New York Times, The Intercept, they're not quite on the same level, but people know The Intersect.

0:41:05 Thomas: It is a major site. If you talk about that, it's pretty tame. And I think it's very reasonable to call out this completely bullshit statistic that Harris put in his 2006 2006 book. I mean, I think Harris should stop being so defensive and recognize that a mass murderer put the same rhetoric in his manifesto that he had put in his book. That's creepy. And I, you know, and again, if it were true, like if the thing that he quoted were just a fact, fact, it wouldn't be the same to me.

0:41:50 Thomas: You know, like if someone, if a killer, if a deranged killer takes a fact of some kind and puts it in his manifesto and says, "This is one of the reasons I'm killing people." If it's just a fact about the world, you know, maybe, oh, there are 1.5 billion Muslims or whatever it might be. You can't say, well, anyone who has ever said there are 1.5 billion Muslims, they are partially to blame. No. They're just stating a fact about the world. There's that, you can't, you can turn that into blame, but when it's a misleading fake statistic that's totally wrong, that you only find in manifestos and and books about white replacement and said creepy stuff like that, I think it's, it's a different story.

0:42:37 Thomas: Here's a quote I, uh, picked up in this HuffPo article that I think is, is, it, it shows how, on some level, there is a wider atmosphere of Islamophobia that's not, again, it's not literally pulling the trigger here, but is problematic and partially blameworthy. Check this out. This is a frightening thing. Quote, and the fearmongering is working. In 2016, a survey showed that Americans believe believe 17% of the country is Muslim. It's closer to 1%. The French think the proportion of Muslims in their country is more than four times what it really is. The British believe it to be triple what the numbers actually say. End quote.

0:43:22 Thomas: I mean, that's kind of, that'S scary. You know, that's a little, it's one thing if you're just uninformed. Like, I guess if someone were to ask Ask me what the, you know, how many Muslims or how many of any group are in the country. Hard to say that I would be anywhere near correct on a lot of them. So that's part of it. But jumping from 17%, you know. From closer to 1% to 17%. I think that's not a coincidence. I think That is very much a product of some bias and some overblown media coverage. And it's something to be aware of, you know, like when when there's these storylines of how these these people, quote unquote, you know, are coming over here and they're reproducing more and they are erasing, you know, and then you find out the actual population numbers are like not even close to that.

0:44:18 Thomas: It's I think it's telling is all. But if we talk about somebody who is, I think, in my opinion, far more to blame, far further ahead in that lineup of, of blame, you know, that would be Ben Shapiro, who was, who, who is awful in a lot of ways, you know, but he's, he's said horribly Islamophobic things. By the way, he said so much worse about Muslims than Omar has ever said about Jewish people, and yet, you You know, the hypocrisy of just concluding that she hates Jewish people. But then if you were ever to say that Ben Shapiro is Islamophobic, oh no, that's insane. You identity politics person, how could you ever suggest that? So again, all these conservatives, and even more, I find a lot of the people who are against identity politics use it when it's to their advantage.

0:45:12 Thomas: And try to use it whenever it's their advantage, just seems to happen. But without going too far down the Ben Shapiro rabbit hole, I'll just say that, you know, look it up, but he's, he's awful, and what I, a further thing I would want to say about Sam Harris is, yes, you are not the murderer, yes you, I, I genuinely believe that Sam Harris, is absolutely horrified by these killings. I genuinely, believe, I know there are people who don't, and I, disagree with you, you, know, if you think that Sam, Harris is secretly cheering on this killer, I think, I I think you're being way too harsh and I disagree with you. I don't think that's true. Now, how does Ben Shapiro secretly feel about these killings? I don't know. It's less obvious to me. How does Tucker Carlson feel about this?

0:45:59 Thomas: How does he feel about these killings. Less obvious to me. Especially when, you know, how does Fraser Anning feel? Well, he's told us how he feels. Well, this is what happens when you have Muslims. Like, you get to those people, it's less clear that they would be all that sad about this. But no, I genuinely don't think that about Sam Harris. I think Sam Harris is genuinely disgusted by these killings. I really do.

0:46:22 Thomas: And even though I do think he is somewhat blameworthy, I don't, I don't think he would want this to happen ever. But here's where I, here's what I think is another avenue of blame here. Are you providing a gateway to worse ideas? You know? And the answer is, if you are like Sam Harris, having Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson on your show, and by the way, framing it as, "Oh, I can have conversations with these people.

You know, we might disagree, but, you know, they're not like Ezra Klein. I can't even talk to Ezra Klein, you know, but I can have a conversation with Ben Shapiro, which is just insane to me. Just absolutely insane to say that. And the thing you choose to argue with Ben Shapiro about, the thing you chose, now I brought this up before in relation to trans rights and trans acceptance, because if you bring these awful transphobes on your show and say, "Well, we disagree, but, you know, we can have a conversation, we disagree in good faith, here's one thing I disagree with you on," and what you bring up is like the free will debate, or like, I think it was the free will debate, or like, you know, related to God or whatever, that's, that's, that's like, again, imagine if you bring on a grand wizard of the KKK on your show, and you say, "You know, we disagree about some things, particularly, I mean, God, do you really think there's a God?" It's like, what, that's what you're bringing up? You have somebody who is

0:47:56 Thomas: Transphobic, thinks trans people are mentally ill, and the thing you want to engage them on is like free will or something, that, that's, and the same goes for this. So if you provide your massive audience, uh, you legitimize Ben Shapiro in their eyes, and you present Ben Shapiro as, "Oh, he's a reasonable person you can have dialogue with, I might disagree here, there," you know, on a few things, I think you're providing a gateway to worse ideas. Now, it's still going to be, by the way, it's still going to be people worse than Ben Shapiro, marginally worse than Ben Shapiro, who are the worst ideas. It's not that Sam Harris is the worst ideas, but you're providing a gateway. And check this quote out.

0:48:43 Thomas: These international connections, quote, these international connections are hardly unique. In the month before Alexandre Bissonnette, I don't know how you pronounce this, French here, I think, French Canadian, They killed six Muslim men at a mosque in Canada. He Googled President Donald Trump hundreds of times and obsessively searched Twitter for American pundits who had expressed anti-Islam views, including Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, end quote. So you've got another guy here. Ben Shapiro is, you know, particularly in the crosshairs of blame here. But yeah, Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Donald Trump. Donald Trump is far, far, far and away higher up on the blame worthy scale.

0:49:28 Thomas: And again, another little bone to toss out to the Sam Harris fans. I have always appreciated that Sam Harris was very anti-Trump and was vociferously anti-Trump. So I do appreciate that. And so, but still, if you're providing a gateway to these, these worst ideas, to Ben Shapiro, who then maybe that provides a gateway to Tucker Carlson. By the way, also Dave Rubin, Sam Harris is a Dave Ruben like supporter, went on a show and talked to him and support him financially.

And Dave Ruban goes on Tucker Carlton all the time. Dave Rubon is on the Tucker Carlston show just the other week, praising Tucker Carlsen for not apologizing for when Tucker Carlson said that, like, you said creepy crap about uh underage teenage, you know, underage girls. So like this is how these gateways work, you know, and and and you see the defenses come up, the defenses come up.

"Oh, you guys, Thomas, you guys are like, there's no freedom of association anymore, you can't even talk to someone without being implicated and all their things." And, and like, honestly, on some of this stuff, sort of, yes, actually, if there are people with disgusting, odious, racist views, anti-trans views, Islamophobic views, and you provide a gateway to them, in which you don't make clear this is a person who has these disgusting views I disagree with, then I think you, yes, you, you are to blame, you're partially to blame. And and we can say, you know, I'll set aside all the goodwill in the world for, like, "Well, it's a mistake."

0:51:11 Thomas: I didn't know they had that view. Later on, you come back and say, hey, I didn't know this person thought this. I hadn't seen that and I disavow this. Like I'll provide all the, for me personally, I'll give you as many chances as you want if you haven't seen something. It's a big world. There's so much media to consume. Maybe you didn't know, but that's not the case here. You know what Ben Shapiro's views are. You know, what Tucker Carlson's views are, you can't not know.

And so if you're providing a gateway to that you're part of the problem, I think This is where I also need to pause for a second, we're talking about, when we're talking about Islamic terrorism and right-wing terrorism, can we all pause for a second and realize that a, a, Coast Guard, uh, what would you call them, officer, I don't know what you call, Coast guard person, was, was recently stopped from pulling off an insanely awful terrorist attack, like, that could have been horrible, he had weapons and weapons and weapons stockpiled, and was going to go after Democrats and, you know, know, Democratic leadership, and and liberals and journalists, and who knows who else, like, that we were this close to another one of these awful things here in the U.S., it could have been worse.

This is, I think, a more trained person that might have been able to execute, you know, more killings, might have been able to pull off a way worse attack. Like, we were this close. So, like, this is the threat, it's certainly in America the threat is from the right. But I want to pause here, you know, there is an interesting thing, or, actually, I'm almost out of time, so, I don't want to pose here, rather, I want, I wanna draw to a close, uh,

0:52:48 Thomas: Thusly, I said I'd get back to Douglas Murray, you now, there's something to think about here, though, because there is one of these things, I brought these up before, there are these weird situations that happen where each side is on a different side of an issue and accusing the other side of being hypocritical, and sometimes they're both hypocritic, and it's weird, weird here, I, it's a weird thing. Here's what I mean by that. You might have, hypothetically, what, these people exist, I don't know where you fall on this, but there is a group of people who says that Muslims have no responsibility whatsoever for Islamic terrorism, but that anyone, like, people like Sam Harris, have all kinds of responsibility for white supremacist slash Islamophobic terrorism, and Vice versa.

And it's a little weird, because I I mentioned Douglas Murray, he literally, this is insane, I'm probably going to tweet this, because it's just absolutely, it's too, it's too hypocritical to even bear. I read that, I'm going to read it again. Here's the, here's the, the title of Douglas Murray's article: "Who should we blame for the New Zealand atrocity? Apart from the Christchurch gunman himself, it isn't clear that anyone else is responsible." I just did a quick Google. Quick Google. I was able to come up with this in about 0.5 seconds. Here's a Douglas Murray article from 2015. "Muslims do have a responsibility to tackle extremism. Muslim communities in the UK need to make a choice."

0:54:30 Thomas: Will they take some responsibility for tackling the extremists in their midst, or will they continually blame everybody but those responsible? So that wasn't hard to find, Douglas Murray being on the exact opposite side of this once the roles were reversed. But at the same time, so that's hypocrisy, of course. But the same time, it can be hypocritical the other way.

I mean, if you are somebody who says that, you know, no believers in Islam and Muslims have no blame at all for anything that a radical Islamic terrorist is doing, which I think I lean more to that side. You know, I lean more to that side, I don't know if I'm a hundred percent there, but I'm, I'm close. I do think, because I think religion is so weird, you know, like different, different sects of religion might be called the same thing, but they're just not the same at all. I mean, Catholics are so much different from Seventh-day Adventists, and from some, you know, like, so there's all these different factions, and yes, they are all under the umbrella of Christian, Christian, but to say then that they're to blame for radical Christian terrorism, I don't know. I just don't really see it that way anymore. I think I would have answered differently in the past, but I just don't really think...

The only thing they share is a belief in some amount of beliefs in the Bible, but not really. Not if you got down into it. Yes, they believe in this Christian God, but the Christian God means something totally different to them, depending on the sect.

0:56:08 Thomas: So I don't know. But I think if you are of someone of the position that we can't blame Muslims for radical Islamic terror, which I'm pretty much with you there, depends, it totally depends on the individual views. But in general, like, I think we ought to try to stop making average, certainly American Muslims, like they, American Muslims, should hold no blame for like some terrorist in some other country that does something. Like we ought to stop blaming them for that, of course. But then, I mean, what does that say about this argument that, you know, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson are to blame for, like, some white supremacists in New Zealand? I think it's worth thinking about, you know, I think it's worth trying to be consistent one way or the other.

0:56:59 Thomas: Um, and it's, it's interesting, I think it's kind of on an individual basis, and so I've outlined where I think Harris is to blame in this, particularly in that stat. Now there's more, there's stuff he said that I think is, you know, is questionable, and is probably leading people down the wrong path.

And, you know, what the main thing that I thing is problematic here is, if you've ever been someone on Twitter or something, and you've commented on stuff like this, you really quickly, you see the followers of Sam Harris and some of these other big names who are just the scum of the earth, like, they come right out and find you, and it's hard, because if you're popular enough, you know, you're gonna have a lot of people follow you, gonna have a lot people who you probably wouldn't even agree with who follow you, but like, they're expressing some of the same stuff you've expressed, and they're being very bigoted toward, toward Muslims, and they do seem to come right out of the woodwork whenever you mention Sam Harris. They seem to always be focused on Islam above everything, other issue in the world. You know, like it's, I don't think it's coincidental. All right, I know that was a lot to throw at you, that's a lot of thoughts.

That's just, you know, I've been reading about this all day, and there are so many thoughts and so many things I wanted to kind of clarify. I hope that helped, I hope that that gave you stuff to think about. If you disagree, let me know, always call in, the number, it should be in the show notes, if you want to leave a voicemail, or you send an email, something like that.

I'm curious to see what you think about all this, but yeah, this is the bottom line, this, this is horrible, and we need to be careful with providing people pathways,

0:58:45 Thomas: Gateways to worse ideas, and who we legitimize, and who we don't make perfectly clear we are disavowing and don't agree with. So, all right. Thank you so much for listening. Hey, I just want to say it's very important that people support the show for it to keep happening, and you can do that by going to patreon.com/seriouspod and supporting it, that's where I'll recommend for now, um, go there, support the show, you only are charged if I publish it, so, you know, if I go on, if I ever don't publish a show, you don't get charged, that's how Patreon works, I, I think it's probably for the best, so, but, but it is important that you support it, um, so it can keep happening, um, and thanks so much to those who do, I really appreciate you, uh, you, you really are, are great.

0:59:34 Thomas: You make the show happen and thanks for sharing it, for listening, all that good stuff and see you next week.