At the airport entrance Southern and Molyneux mime being blocked by a “force field” as a witty rejoinder to the radical left who declared that the pair would never be allowed into the country. Observe that the archway is decorated by Maori symbols. It surely does not take a genius to imagine how one New Zealand TV reporter interpreted this bit of fun. (Clue: Racism! Disrespect!)
Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux are forging successful careers by demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of left-wing shibboleths.
They are also riding the wave of the future, for increasing numbers of intelligent people are seriously questioning the worldview at the top. And a growing percentage of these are young people. A generation is rising that are not spellbound by buzzwords.
They reflect what is happening in the culture. People are wondering why some hard facts are now taboo. Why are we not allowed to articulate scientific reality about certain topics without it being labelled “hate speech”? Why can’t we speak up about certain medical truths? Why do people get stamped with the label of “fascist” for having common sense views about immigration or gender? When did established historical facts become a minefield that we must tiptoe through for fear of offending someone?
And why is free speech regarded as dangerous – and in desperate need of being monitored and restricted – by that small army of academics, politicians, movie directors, judges, teachers, lawyers, and students who constitute the professional class? The “elites” who tell the rest of us how to live, lecture us, and tell us how to take our freedoms.
It seems to more and more people that we are free to speak our minds so long as we echo the identity talking points and arrive at “the correct” conclusion. Which is always the politically correct, left-wing conclusion.
Yet the leftwing certainties of the elites and the young radicals who are their disciples, are now so ridiculous they can only survive outside of scrutiny and objective fact.
The worldview of the left-wing elite is hilarious.
Just look at modern universities which are the breeding grounds for so-called “progressive” politics.
Students now need “trigger warnings” before they open a book. University campuses are dangerous battlefields full of “microaggressions” – worse than Iraq! Students need “safe spaces” where they can hyperventilate into brown paper bags, and calm themselves down with biscuits and milk. Students introduce themselves with the phrase, “And these are my pronouns“.
As St. Paul forecast, “they think themselves wise but have become fools“.
Surely modern campus life stands as a powerful symbol of the intellectual sterility and the glass-like fragility of identity politics. This is not cleverness. It is utter stupidity. It is moronic. It is unscientific. It is irrational. It is worthy of pillory.
It is dangerous to let it go unchallenged. Right-thinking people; moral people; intelligent people have a duty to their society to question it. Mock it. And combat it.
That’s why identarian politics has become a staple of comedy. That is a warning sign for any political ideology. When your ideas become the punchline of jokes you can be sure that those ideas are beginning to crumble. If you want to destroy a political idea, laugh at it, and invite others to laugh as well. This is why dictators have no sense of humour.
Thus, memes comparing Premier Xi to Winnie the Pooh are now censored in China. The Communist Party understands that laughing at the elite is to delegitimise them.
Political correctness and Social Justice Warriors are the material for enormously popular Youtube channels dedicated to capturing their idiocy on camera. It is this idiocy that Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux confront with calmness, patience, and a rather good eye for the entertainment value of the perpetually offended.
Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux have just completed a sold-out tour of Australia where they exposed (once again) that the politically correct are unintelligent beings whose capacity for critical thought has atrophied. The pair encountered quite a range of foolish people, including a very silly policeman and a group of students who repeatedly screamed “racist dog” at Lauren Southern even when they were given the chance to actually discuss issues, make a case, and offer an argument.
The pair also had to contend with Australian TV interviewers. These journalists were desperate to display their politically-correct credentials during interviews. At the same time, they tacitly recognised the star quality of these wonderfully articulate North Americans. They were practically queuing up to secure interviews with them. This is not at all surprising because Southern and Molyneux are now internationally famous people who command more name-recognition (and respect) than most Australian journalists could ever dream of.
Now the pair have gone to New Zealand. Just when you thought the media class could not be more unintelligent and dimwitted than that found in Australia, we discover that there are dark depths of unmitigated, blood-curdling cretinism hitherto not plumbed in modern history.
Yes, it is true. There are television interviewers that make Cathy Newman look positively sharp. Remember Cathy Newman? She is now chiefly famous for her disastrous interview with Jordan Peterson who calmly dismantled her politically correct talking points and left her literally lost for words.
The Southern and Molyneux interview currently doing the rounds is with a journalist by the name of Patrick Gower. When I first watched the interview, my first thought was that it could not possibly be real. The interviewer, I told myself, must be an actor or perhaps this was a bit of film caught off-interview. Maybe Southern and Molyneux were casually talking to one of the behind-the-scenes studio employees or a cleaner? But no. This is actually a real thing. This is a real interview.
Patrick Gower (I understand) is one of New Zealand’s premier political reporters. If this is true then New Zealand is in grave trouble. For I have seldom come across an interview that was so obviously intended to rebuke people for their “incorrect” opinions, and one which so boringly repeated stale left-wing talking points that no longer have traction.
Perhaps Gower lives in a bubble and does not read much news outside of his own persuasion. Perhaps he assumes that anyone on the so-called “alt-right” are hillbillies and hicks and thus easily tripped over. Perhaps he thought he did not need to do much preparation since he was combating them on home turf. Perhaps he assumed they would be easy to ridicule and tear to pieces.
Except they weren’t.
Gower discovered that both Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were intelligent and rational people. They could think on their feet. They were reasonable in their outlook. They had done their homework. They were erudite and switched on. Articulate and personable. They were lively, sparkling, and above all interesting people who were saying interesting things. Instead of the boring, recycled, warmed up, microwaved, politically correct sludge that usually features on such TV interviews.
In contrast to his guests, many noted that Patrick Gower seemed shockingly unprepared for the interview and seemed to struggle to understand even very rudimentary points. At one place in the interview, he asked three times for a joke to be explained to him. He gave me the overwhelming impression of being very far away, perhaps on another planet altogether, trying hard to understand incoming signals on an antiquated and degraded radio set. Except he was sitting about two metres away from his guests.
Unsurprisingly, the comments on the video are scathing. Many claim an apparent chasm of intelligence between the interviewer and his interlocutors. Other comments show an increasing cynicism about the media altogether:
What was wrong with the host? Lauren and Stephan had to literally explain the same joke, in detail, 3 times before he understood it.
To which someone sarcastically replied:
Oh he understood it, but he was trying his best to twist it into something that would outrage the public. He has power and he is playing his role to keep and gain more power. The whole identity politics movement (as with most political unending movements) is a power grab.
Another commentator posted:
I’ve seen some pretty cringe worthy left wing reporters before, but he has to be the worst, he was completely intellectually out of his depth.
Do they actually pay that guy to do interviews? He must be somewhere on the bell curve to fulfill their equal opportunity.
Perhaps these comments may seem harsh but they are expressions of justifiable disdain and anger.
The media peddles unrighteousness. Much of the media (especially left-wing media) supports and advances a dangerous and totalitarian ideology – political correctness – and this attacks and vilifies traditional families, the Church, normality (as God created it), godliness, the integrity of a society, law and order, the integrity of a nation, appropriate penalties for crimes, common sense, discipline, and so on and so on. Politically correctness also attacks the most productive members of a community. It is inherently anti-science. And anti-reason.
The media personalities that support this dying creed are the inquisition of our time. They want to police ideas; lecture people like a classical schoolmarm for the “wrong” ideas. Yet if the new wave of anti-politically correct politics proves anything, identity politics and political correctness is running out of time.
It is bereft of ideas; it is intellectually sterile; and it is moribund. Overnight (it seems) this interview has become a symbol of the stupidity of recreational outrage; of the politically correct brain fog; and even the political senility of the elites.
Watch it here.
The Determined Pilgrim in an Arid Land 